Despite taking an early leadership in COVID-19 diagnosis and epidemic response, South Korea has been months behind in the global race to either develop vaccines or secure jabs already developed and inoculate its citizens.

While playing catch-up, the government is hoping to draw attention to its achievements elsewhere -- their syringes.

Low dead-space syringes, which local firm PoongLim Pharmatech developed in partnership with the government, has allowed the country to inoculate 1,880 more people, with 117,000 doses of Pfizer vaccines imported last month. The first batch of vaccines were officially for 58,500 people, but 60,380 received the shots, as the LDS syringes minimized the amount of vaccine left in the syringe after use.

“Only LDS syringes have been used in the first-stage vaccinations. As there were some leftover doses, more people (who were not included in the initial vaccination target, but were identified as candidates) were able to receive the shots,” Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency Commissioner Jung Eun-kyeong told a press conference Monday.

A typical syringe’s residual volume in the space between hub and needle amounts to around 0.07 milliliters, while that of LDS syringes is 0.035 milliliters, meaning the amount of wasted vaccine can be cut in half.

Using the special syringe, a single vial of the Pfizer vaccine can produce up to six to seven doses, rather than the official five, while that of the AstraZeneca vaccine can produce up to 12 shots, from the official 10, according to the government.

The South Korean government aims to increase local production of the syringes, viewing that they could mirror the success of the country’s COVID-19 diagnostic kits in the early days of the pandemic. Countries around the world had competed to secure the testing and diagnostic tools made by Korean firms.

It was South Korea’s Ministry of SMEs and Startups that took the initiative for the development of the syringes. It bridged the collaboration between conglomerate Samsung and PoongLim Pharmatech, a small syringe maker, to look ahead and develop products for the global vaccination campaign.

Samsung then dispatched some 30 specialists to help PoongLim to expand its production lines. The company, which was capable of producing 4 million LDS syringes a month, is now able to produce 10 million in the same span of time. PoongLim is currently wrapping up construction of a new factory that would double the company’s production capacity in the future.

PoongLim, which became widely known when President Moon Jae-in made his visit to the company, also received approval for its product’s emergency use from the US Food and Drug Administration last month.

The syringe maker said it would donate 120,000 syringes while it seeks to supply more than 260 million syringes to some 20 countries. Japan, for instance, reportedly made a request last month for a supply of around 80 million of the syringes.

In June, another special syringe maker, Koreavaccine, is to receive help from South Korea’s SMEs and Startups Ministry and Samsung to improve its production capacity.

The country’s increased production capacity for LDS syringes is considered a useful negotiation tool as the South Korean government tries to secure COVID-19 vaccines for domestic inoculation.

Former SME Minister Park Young-sun said, “We looked for some kind of a leverage in our future negotiations with vaccine developers and found syringes could do that.”

Local reports said the government, currently in negotiations with foreign countries to secure enough vaccines, is seeking to use LDS syringes as a bargaining chip.

The reports said the government has requested the US to exchange vaccines from Janssen, Moderna and Novavax with the syringes after Janssen and Moderna recently noticed that it could cut down the amount of COVID-19 vaccine shipments to South Korea in the second quarter.

According to the KDCA, the country is currently able to produce over 800,000 LDS syringes a day -- more than enough to cover domestic vaccination.

Shina Corp. and PoongLim Pharmatech are two local companies that have already received approval from the FDA. Other companies that are producing LDS syringes include Sungshim Medical and Doowon Meditec.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)