About 560,000 doses of vaccine against foot-and-mouth (FMD) disease are set to arrive in South Korea later this week, the agriculture ministry said Monday, a move that would help the nation prevent the further spread of the animal disease.
The development came after South Korea recently asked a British manufacturer of the vaccine, Merial, for emergency imports of the FMD vaccine for the type O+A virus to fight against the simultaneous outbreak of the type A and type O viruses. So far, about 1,400 cattle have been slaughtered.
Merial notified the ministry last Saturday that it will ship a total of 565,000 doses of the vaccine to South Korea, ministry officials said.
After a type A case was reported at a cow farm northeast of Seoul on Feb. 8, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs requested Merial to allow an emergency import of vaccines for the type O+A virus, which are also effective in treating cows hit by the type A virus.
South Korea has vaccines for the type O+A virus but only for about 1.9 million cows, not enough for the 2.8 million cows that require it, according to officials.
Merial, a leading global animal health and vaccine manufacturer, has been South Korea's main source of vaccine imports.
South Korea plans to start producing its own FMD vaccines in 2020. (Yonhap)