South Korea finds no link between deaths and the coronavirus vaccine

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea said on Monday it had found no link between the coronavirus vaccine and several recent deaths, as it ordered testing of nearly 100,000 foreign workers after groups appeared in dormitories.

Health officials investigated the deaths of eight people who had side effects after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, but said they found no evidence that the shots played a role.

“We provisionally concluded that it was difficult to establish any link between their adverse reaction after vaccination and their deaths,” the director of the Korean Agency for Disease Control and Prevention (KDCA), Jeong Eun-kyeong, said in a briefing.

South Korea began vaccinating residents and workers at nursing homes and other at-risk homes in late February, with 316,865 people receiving the first blows since Sunday.

South Koreans aged 65 and over were not given the AstraZeneca vaccine after health regulators concluded that more data were needed to confirm its effectiveness in that age group.

But on Monday, Jeong said a group of experts has now recommended shooting for the elderly and that the KDCA will soon make a final decision.

COMMUNITY DWELLINGS

Several outbreaks in manufacturing and other industrial jobs have led authorities to begin inspecting 12,000 jobs with international workers, while several local governments have ordered the testing of foreign workers in the coming days.

“Their work environment and communal housing raise the risk of infection, but it is difficult to find patients early because of limited access to medical resources and testing and the problem of illegal residence,” Jeong said.

Gyeonggi Province has ordered about 85,000 foreign workers to be tested in the next two weeks, Vice President of Administrative Affairs Lee Yong-chul said in a briefing.

At least 151 foreign residents in Dongducheon City in Gyeonggi have recently yielded positive results, although what caused the outbreak is still unclear.

In Namyangju, another city in Gyeonggi, at least 124 foreigners gave positive results after an outbreak at a plastics factory.

In another central province, the industrial cities of Eumseong and Jincheon also ordered that between 4,500 and 5,000 foreign residents be tested after group infections arose from a glass factory and a food processing company.

Working conditions for migrant workers in South Korea have received new scrutiny after a Cambodian woman was found dead living in a greenhouse at freezing winter temperatures late last year.

The deaths of hundreds of mainly undocumented Thai workers in South Korea prompted the United Nations last year to call for an inquiry into the plight of migrants.

The number of deaths of Thai workers has reached an annual record in 2020 – 122 since mid-December – according to a report by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.