President Moon upbeat about COVID-19 vaccination goal

President Moon Jae-in expressed optimism Saturday that South Korea will attain its goal of getting 13 million people inoculated against COVID-19 by the end of June.

"Vaccinations are gaining speed," he wrote on his Facebook account. Just over the past two days, 1.2 million people received vaccine shots, raising the total to 5.23 million, 10.2 percent of the nation's population, as of Friday, he noted.

If the current pace is maintained, there will be no problem in achieving the aim of getting 13 million people vaccinated within the first half of this year, he added.

Moon pointed out that South Korea is taking advantage of its advanced information technology (IT) sector, especially the use of a real-time search, notification and reservation system for residual doses of vaccines from no-shows.

"It helps further increase the vaccination rate and prevent even a little of the precious vaccines from being thrown away," he added.

The shipment of coronavirus vaccines is proceeding as scheduled and consultations are under way as well for the introduction of additional ones, according to the president.

Thus, he said, the nation will be able to reach herd immunity "at an early date."

He requested that the public actively take vaccine shots, while abiding strictly to social distancing and other antivirus measures. (Yonhap)