Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun on Wednesday urged health authorities to remain guarded against potential new coronavirus outbreaks as to allow safe proceedings of the upcoming April by-elections.

Citizens of Seoul and Busan, the nation's second-largest city in the southeast, will hit voting booths on April 7 to pick their new mayors in their respective by-elections. Nineteen other seats, mostly of local governments and councils, scattered across the country will also be up for grabs.

The mayoral seat in Seoul has been vacant since July of last year, when Mayor Park Won-soon, a human rights lawyer-turned-politician, was found dead in an apparent suicide amid shocking sexual harassment allegations. The Busan chief seat is also vacant after Mayor Oh Keo-don resigned also from sexual harassment allegations last April.

"As the embers from the flames of the pandemic's third wave still remain, (authorities) must do their utmost in implementing election-focused virus measures with a sense of alertness," Chung said during a daily interagency meeting on the coronavirus response.

Chung said authorities must not grow careless from the relatively small scale of the by-elections, especially after the experience of having managed a massive, nationwide general election last year, which received near universal praise for implementing successful virus control measures.

"The number of new daily patients was merely around 20 during the general election, while we are seeing 300 to 400 new patients as of late," Chung noted.

Chung also announced that 500,000 jabs of the Pfizer vaccine purchased by the government arrived in the country a short while ago.

"The (Pfizer) vaccine will start being used in April on people aged 75 and older," he explained.

The prime minister also asked senior citizens to "trust the government" and not hesitate in participating in the public vaccination program, amid lingering safety concerns of COVID-19 vaccines.

Under the country's vaccination program that started Feb. 26, a total of 12 million people will be vaccinated by the end of June.

Foreigners also will be inoculated under the program. The country aims to achieve herd immunity by November. (Yonhap)