Avoiding Vacation at the End of July and Beginning of August... Dual-Income Couples Say, "Are You Telling Us Not to Go?"

Government Recommends Distributed Use
"Should Align with School Breaks" Complaints

Haphazard Vaccine Administration Also Controversial
First Dose Expected to Reach 10 Million This Week

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporters Seo So-jeong, Lee Chun-hee] "Daycare centers and kindergartens have vacations concentrated from late July to early August, so how can parents stagger their vacations?"

Park, a man in his 30s working at a large corporation, expressed frustration over the government's recommendation to stagger summer vacations to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Park said, "The kindergarten my child attends is closed during the early August summer vacation," adding, "Dual-income couples have no choice but to take vacations during their children's school breaks due to childcare gaps, so this policy is just an empty promise."

Choi, in his 40s, said, "My elementary school child’s vacation starts in late July, so to minimize childcare gaps, I have no choice but to take vacation during the break," and added bitterly, "Last year, when academies were banned from gathering due to COVID-19, we struggled to fill the childcare gap, but it seems the quarantine measures do not consider dual-income couples at all."

The Ministry of Health and Welfare recommended at the COVID-19 special quarantine inspection meeting chaired by President Moon Jae-in the day before that families take vacations in small groups and avoid late July to early August. To this end, public officials and public institutions were allowed to start their summer vacations two weeks earlier, from the third week of this month. They recommended not exceeding the weekly maximum recommended vacation usage rate of 13% and advised splitting vacations into two or more periods.

The government also proposed incentives such as awarding extra points to companies excelling in vacation period dispersion for industrial accident prevention commendations or selection as clean business operators, but the response on the ground is cold. A representative from a small or medium-sized enterprise pointed out, "We do not feel significant benefits from incentives in the form of extra points."

Regarding this, Yoon Tae-ho, head of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters’ quarantine team, said at a back briefing on the 8th, "We plan to request cooperation to stagger vacation periods for daycare centers, kindergartens, and academies," and added, "We will also strive to discover additional incentives for private companies to stagger vacations."

Confusion over cancellations after reservations by non-eligible groups... Janssen reservations flawed from the start

[Image source=Yonhap News]

The government has stepped up efforts to increase vaccination rates, but controversies are growing due to the health authorities’ haphazard administration. The day before, Pfizer vaccinations began for about 260,000 people excluded from AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccinations due to concerns about ‘rare thrombosis’ among medical workers and essential social workers.

However, confusion arose as some employees in their 20s at companies and institutions such as Samsung Electronics, the Bank of Korea, and the National Assembly, who were not eligible for vaccination, succeeded in making advance reservations.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency stated, "All 20,000 non-eligible individuals canceled their reservations and were notified individually via text messages." This error occurred just one week after confusion caused by the omission of some civil defense personnel from the Janssen vaccine reservation list.

The Pfizer vaccination that started the day before is also proceeding on a first-come, first-served basis due to discrepancies between eligible recipients and available vaccine quantities. The government initially estimated about 190,000 eligible people for this reservation, but the actual number reached 267,000, so only 200,000 reservations were accepted, with the rest scheduled for next month.

The reservation, which began at midnight the day before, showed high popularity with 112,000 people applying within 13 hours.

Meanwhile, the number of first-dose vaccinations reached about 855,000 the day before, marking the largest daily scale since vaccinations began. The cumulative number of first-dose recipients is about 8.455 million, and it is expected that more than 10 million people, about 20% of the population, will complete their first dose within this week.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.