Want a Vaccine Reservation in South Korea? Try Waiting 111 Hours.

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Once held up as a model in fighting the pandemic, South Korea has stumbled for months with its vaccination programme.

SEOUL — When South Koreans logged on to a government website this month to book COVID-19 vaccine appointments, a pop-up window told them there was “just a bit” of a delay.

This month, officials told people in their 50s that their turn to make vaccine reservations had finally arrived. Up to 10 million people simultaneously​ logged on to a government website to request shots. The system, designed to process up to 300,000 requests at a time, crashed. “The government was sending a wrong signal to the people,” said Kim Woo-joo, an infectious disease specialist at Korea University in Seoul.

“We don’t need to become the first or second nation in the world to start vaccination,” Son said in December. Unlike the United States and Britain, which had to roll out vaccines in a hurry to address severe levels of infections, he said, South Korea had the luxury of being able to wait and see if the shots were effective and safe. ​

On paper, South Korea has ordered 190 million shots, enough to fully inoculate twice the population. So far, it has received only 25 million.

 

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