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Gov’t makes changes again in vaccine stockpile guidelines

Gov’t makes changes again in vaccine stockpile guidelines

Posted June. 10, 2021 07:25,   

Updated June. 10, 2021 07:25

한국어

Frequent guideline changes on the handling of COVID 19 vaccine stockpiles are causing confusion at frontline hospitals and clinic. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency encourages the public to book leftover vaccines via applications, while medical institutions prefer to use their own lists.  

The state agency announced on Wednesday that it would allow medical institutions to use their own lisle for remaining vaccination volumes until Saturday. This means that medical institutions can use their own waiting lists instead of uploading remaining volume on Naver, Kakao or other mobile apps used to book vaccines. The KDCA asked medical institutions to refrain from receiving additional waiting lists.  

Such changes were taken in response to the requests of medical institutions, which prefer to use their own lists. Though hospitals and clinics welcome the delay, they point out that the change in guidelines is occurring more confusion. “We are not familiar with the process to register on the reservation app that frequently doesn’t work properly” said Jang Hyun-jae, who owns Fatima Clinic in Nowon-gu in Seoul. “All of this creates more work for us. It’s true that it’s much more convenient for us to use our own list.”

The KDCA initially announced that it would let clinics use internal waiting lists until June 3, which was revised later on to June 9. Chung Eun-kyung, the head of KDCA, apologized for the confusion. The recent change, however, was made again after the apology. “The frequent change of policy is causing confusion. It would have been wiser for us to get advice from those working on frontlines before applying the guidelines,” she said.  

As of midnight of Wednesday since May 27, when vaccine reservations via app started, 609,668 received vaccinations via clinic’s waiting lists while only 26,476 managed to get shots via app service.


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