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You Young-min, presidential chief of staff, speaks during a session of the National Assembly's House Steering Committee in Seoul on Monday. (Yonhap News)

South Korea will have 170 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines available to use next year, the Blue House said.

The total includes 90 million doses that are being newly purchased for use in 2022 — up from the originally planned 50 million — and the remaining unused vaccine doses from this year.

Speaking at a plenary session of the National Assembly Steering Committee on Monday, Blue House Chief of Staff Yoo Young-min said, "Even after all vaccinations have been completed as planned, we will have a total of 80 million doses left over until next year."

"For next year, we are planning to purchase a total of 90 million additional doses. The 170 million doses that will be available for use next year amounts to more than triple the population," he said.

The government's decision to increase its purchasing of vaccines for use in 2022 appears to reflect the spread of the Delta variant of the virus, which has made the herd immunity target more difficult to achieve, as well as the fact that major countries around the world have been lowering the target ages for inoculation.

On Aug. 4, Lee Ki-il, first control officer for the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, said that negotiations on acquiring vaccine doses for next year were "nearly in their final stages."

"The revised supplementary budget includes around 50 million [vaccine recipients'] worth, reflecting the amount needed for all South Koreans to receive a single dose of mRNA vaccines [such as those produced by Pfizer and Moderna] in particular," he said.

The plan for purchasing 50 million doses was based on the prediction that most people inoculated next year would receive one dose rather than two.

But when President Moon Jae-in received a report on the 2022 budget plan from Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance Hong Nam-ki on Friday, he insisted that the "vaccine budget should have some leeway built into it so that we can be fully prepared for the different variables, including the emergence of new virus variants in the future and downward adjustments to the vaccination target ages," Blue House spokesperson Park Kyung-mee said.

While the Democratic Party, administration, and Blue House had initially discussed a 2022 vaccine purchasing budget of 1.5 trillion won (US$1.28 billion), that amount was adjusted to 2.5 trillion won (US$2.14 billion) at Moon's instruction, Park said.

For 2021, the government has acquired 193 million vaccine doses. As of Monday, a total of 43.91 million doses had arrived, including 19.03 million from AstraZeneca, 19.9 million from Pfizer, 3.47 million from Moderna, and 1.51 million from Janssen.

On Monday, Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) Commissioner Jung Eun-kyeong appeared before a plenary session of the National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee.

"We will be able to apply the 'with corona' approach [of coexisting with and managing COVID-19] once at least 70% [of the population] has been fully vaccinated," she said.

"We expect to be able to begin publicly preparing for the 'with corona' era around late September or early October," she added.

She also said, "I anticipate that we'll be able to ease up social distancing measures to some extent in stages once we have a thorough medical and disease control response in place for the 'with corona' era so that we can control things at a level we can cope with."

Jung also commented on plans for booster shots for the fully vaccinated.

"We're considering beginning our booster shot administration with COVID-19 treatment hospitals and long-term care hospitals," she said.

"The booster shot administration period will be through the first half of next year," she added.

But the matter of administering booster shots for the rest of the public will require further examination, she said. In late July, the KDCA announced that booster shot administration to high-risk groups would take place between October to November or later.

When asked when the fourth wave would reach its peak, Jung said, "It's difficult to predict, but we do not anticipate it will peak and then rapidly decline."

"We're expecting the wave to continue at a roughly stable level through September and then gradually decline [after that]," she said.

By Choi Ha-yan, staff reporter

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