South Korea approves first homemade COVID-19 vaccine

By KIM TONG-HYUNG
Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Health officials in South Korea have approved the country’s first domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine for people 18 years or older, adding another public health tool in the fight against a prolonged pandemic. In clinical trials involving some 4,000 participants in South Korea and five other countries, SK Bioscience’s two-dose SKYCovione vaccine appeared to be more effective than the broadly used AstraZeneca shots in building immunity against infections, officials said Wednesday. It isn’t immediately clear how officials will administer the newly developed vaccine, which was designed for the original version of the coronavirus, not the more transmissible omicron variant that wreaked havoc in the country earlier this year.