The country's government has rolled out a flu vaccine campaign, concerned about the potential simultaneous spread of coronavirus and influenza.
At least 36 people have died after taking flu vaccinations since last Friday, including a 17-year-old. The average age of those who died was 74, according to the South Korean Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
As of Friday, more than 14 million people had gotten the flu vaccine, of which 9.4 million were children, elderly, and pregnant women, according to the KDCA.
Ki Moran, a professor at South Korea's National Cancer Centre, said the flu vaccine is known to cause serious side effects in one out of 10 million people.
In 2019, 227,000 people over the age of 65 died in South Korea, she added. That's an average of 621 deaths a day, to put the recent figures into perspective.
The KDCA decided on Friday not to suspend the flu vaccinations. The vaccination expert committee will hold a meeting Saturday morning to review additional data, according to a KDCA statement.
Rare side effects
The KDCA's Friday meeting came after rising scrutiny from experts and politicians.
On Friday, South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun called for a thorough investigation into the deaths, citing public anxiety, according to a press release by the Health Ministry. He did not call for a halt to the vaccination campaign.
The Korean Medical Association, a coalition of 130,000 doctors, has urged the government to suspend the vaccination program for a week until they determined the cause of the deaths.
In a statement, the Korean Vaccine Society emphasized the importance of the flu vaccine, especially "for children, the elderly, and patients with chronic diseases and low immune system." The organization cited concerns about the possible spread of flu during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Experts globally are preparing for flu season in the middle of the pandemic. "This is a critical year for us to try to take flu as much off the table as we can," said Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in an interview with the AMA's JAMA Network.
One reason is to decrease the strain on public health services and hospitals, which are bracing for a winter wave. Experts say it possible to get Covid-19 and the flu simultaneously -- and, because flu symptoms look so similar to that of Covid-19, it will be impossible to rule out a coronavirus diagnosis without a test. That means a case of the flu can cause substantial disruption to work and school.
In South Korea, Covid-19 has infected 25,775 people and killed 457, according to Johns Hopkins University.
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