韩国13人接种流感疫苗后死亡，引发公众担忧

​SEOUL​, South Korea — The South Korean authorities are investigating the mysterious deaths of 13 people after they had been vaccinated against seasonal influenza. And though officials said there was no link between the deaths and the vaccinations, there was worry that the cases could cause panic at a critical time for vaccination efforts.

韩国首尔——韩国当局正在调查13人在接种季节性流感疫苗后神秘死亡的事件。虽然官员们表示，死亡事件和接种疫苗之间没有关联，但人们担心这可能会在疫苗接种工作的关键时刻引发恐慌。

The deaths happened over the past week, including five reported on Wednesday and four others overnight Thursday. Officials said that two of the deaths might have resulted from anaphylactic shock, a serious allergic reaction, but gave no further details.

死亡事件都发生在过去一周，包括周三报告的五人和周四夜间报告的另外四人。官员们表示，其中两起死亡可能是由于过敏性休克，这是一种严重的过敏反应，但没有提供进一步的细节。

The deaths are under investigation, but officials were quick to rule out the vaccines themselves — which they said were all from local drugmakers and not from lots for export — as the main cause. Given the scope of South Korea’s flu vaccination program, and the small number of other problems reported so far, some experts said that coincidence is more likely to be involved.

死亡事件正在调查中，但官员们很快排除了疫苗本身出问题的可能性——他们说这些疫苗都由当地制药商生产，而且并非用于出口的批次。考虑到韩国流感疫苗接种计划的规模，以及迄今为止未有太多其他问题报告，因此一些专家认为，这更有可能是巧合。

Instead, officials vowed to step up a government flu-vaccination campaign to prevent the country’s health care system from being overloaded with flu patients amid the coronavirus pandemic — both viruses have similar symptoms of early infection, like fever and cough.

官员们反而表态，要加大政府的流感疫苗接种工作力度，以防在新冠病毒大流行期间，流感感染者令医疗系统不堪重负——这两种病毒在感染早期有类似症状，比如发烧和咳嗽。

“We have not found a direct connection between these deaths and vaccines, or a relationship between the deaths and adverse effects reported after flu shots,” said Jung Eun-kyeong, commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. “We don’t think that the situation calls for the suspending of the inoculation program.”

“我们没发现这些死亡事件与疫苗有直接联系，也没发现与注射流感疫苗后报告的副作用有关，”韩国疾病控制与预防中心主任郑银敬(Jung Eun-kyeong)说。“我们认为目前的情况不需要暂停疫苗的接种计划。”

Ms. Jung convened a special news conference on Wednesday after the rapid series of deaths, starting with a teenager who died on Friday, grabbed headlines in South Korea. But with autopsies likely to take days, public anxiety is running high in a country where anti-vaccine sentiment has flared before.

自一名青少年上周五死亡后，一连串突发死亡事件引起了韩国广泛关注，郑银敬在周三召开了特别新闻发布会。但由于尸检可能需要数天时间，在这个反疫苗情绪曾经高涨的国家，公众非常焦虑。

South Korea, and many other countries, have seen annual flu inoculation programs as critical to efforts to also deal with the coronavirus, especially for children, the elderly, pregnant women and medical personnel. Officials unveiled plans to procure 20 percent more flu vaccines for this winter than last year to inoculate up to 30 million people, more than half the country’s population.

韩国及其他许多国家都认为，每年的流感疫苗接种计划对应对新冠病毒也至关重要，尤其是儿童、老人、孕妇和医务人员。官员们公布了为今冬采购比去年多20%的流感疫苗计划，为多达3000万人接种，占全国人口的一半以上。

But the campaign made headlines last month when it was discovered that some vaccines supplied by a local company, which needed to be refrigerated at all times, had been exposed to room temperature while being transported. ​ A recall was ordered and officials said about 2,300 people had received doses from the faulty batch, which was meant mainly for young children and teenagers.

但在上个月，该计划登上新闻头条，因为有人发现当地一家供应部分疫苗的公司在运输过程中，将这些需要冷藏的疫苗暴露在室温下。政府下令召回，官员们称大约2300人接种了这批主要给儿童和青少年使用的问题疫苗。

Still, officials said that alone should not have rendered the vaccines dangerous. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the concern about lack of temperature control is that it can render the vaccines ineffective, rather than toxic.

尽管如此，官员们说，单凭这一点不会使疫苗变得危险。疾控中心表示，缺乏温度控制让人担心会导致疫苗失效，而不是有毒。

Then, earlier this month, 615,000 doses of a flu vaccine​ shipped by another company were also recalled after some of them were found to contain white particles, which the government described as being a harmless protein. Almost 18,000 people had received doses before they were recalled.

然而，在本月早些时候，另一家公司运输的61.5万份流感疫苗也被召回，因为其中一些发现含有白色颗粒，政府称这种颗粒是无害的蛋白质。近1.8万人在疫苗被召回之前进行了接种。

No serious harm had been reported from either of those lots, though dozens of people who received those doses reported fevers or other minor complaints — which are common reactions to flu shots, officials said. None of nine people who died had received vaccines from those that had been recalled, they added.

这两批问题疫苗没有造成严重伤害的报告，但数十名接种者报告了发烧和其他轻微症状——官员们称，这是接种流感疫苗的常见反应。他们还补充说，九名死者接种的都不是被召回的疫苗。

After suspending the vaccination program for teenagers for three weeks, it resumed on Oct. 13. Three days later, a 17-year-old boy in Incheon, just west of Seoul, died after receiving his shot. On Tuesday, a 77-year-old woman was found dead at her home in Gochang, south of Seoul, after being vaccinated a day earlier. On the same day, an 82-year-old man who had also been inoculated died in the central city of Daejeon.

在暂停三周之后，青少年的疫苗接种计划于10月13日恢复。三天后，在首尔以西的仁川市，一名17岁男孩在接种疫苗后死亡。周二，一名77岁妇女被发现死于她在首尔以南高敞郡的家中，她曾在前一天接种疫苗。同一天，一名同样接种过疫苗的82岁男子在中部的大田市死亡。

Four of the five people who died on Wednesday ranged in age from 53 to 89. Information about the two other people who died, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday, has not been released.

周三死亡的5人中，有4人年龄在53岁到89岁之间。另外2名死者一人在周二死亡，一人在周三死亡，他们的信息尚未公布。

Nine of those who died, all of whom had received flu shots in the past, received vaccines supplied by several different local drugmakers, officials said.

官员们称，九名死者都有流感疫苗接种史，这次接种的是当地几家不同制药商提供的疫苗。

“Since most people who got flu shots with the same vaccines reported no major problems, we concluded that those vaccines do not contain toxic materials,” said Kim Joong-gon, ​a professor of medicine at Seoul National University who led a team of investigators. “We​ concluded that we can exclude ​the vaccine ​as a problem.”​

“由于接种了相同疫苗的大多数人都没有出现大问题，我们的结论是这些疫苗不含有毒物质，”一个调查小组的负责人、首尔大学(Seoul National University)的医学教授金钟坤(Kim Joong-gon)说。“我们的结论是，可以排除疫苗的问题。”

In general, flu vaccines have a good safety record. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that the body of scientific evidence over decades “overwhelmingly” supports their safety.

一般来说，流感疫苗有良好的安全记录。在美国，疾控中心表示，数十年来的大量科学证据都“绝对”支持它们的安全性。

Specifically in South Korea, officials said that since 2009, 25 people in South Korea had died after receiving flu vaccinations, but that only one of the deaths was tied to the process.

具体到韩国，官员们表示，自2009年以来，韩国有25人在接种流感疫苗后死亡，但只有一例与接种流程有关。

Nearly 13 million South Koreans have received flu shots so far this year, 8.3 million of them for free as part of the government program. There have been complaints about minor reactions to shots, but those are normal every flu season. And Ms. Jung said Wednesday that some of the complaints were likely to have been influenced by media coverage of the recalls.

今年到目前为止，韩国已有近1300万人接种了流感疫苗，其中830万人参与了政府的免费项目。有人投诉接种疫苗后产生的轻微反应，但在每个流感季节这都是常态。郑银敬周三表示，部分投诉可能受到了媒体对召回事件报道的影响。

The anxiety over flu shots could also undermine public trust in an eventual coronavirus vaccine, which is already faltering as countries race to get their candidates approved. In a survey this month of 2,500 people in Gyeonggi-do, a populous province surrounding the South Korean capital of Seoul, 62 percent of respondents said they would not get vaccinated against the coronavirus until after the vaccine was proved to be completely safe.

对流感疫苗的担忧还可能破坏公众对最终研制出的新冠病毒疫苗的信任，随着各国竞相争取让候选疫苗获得批准，公众对疫苗的信任已经摇摇欲坠。本月，在环绕韩国首都首尔的人口大省京畿道对2500人进行的一项调查中，62%的受访者表示，在被证明完全安全之前，他们不会接种新冠病毒疫苗。

Many scientists have expressed concern about the speed with which coronavirus vaccines are being developed. But getting a vaccine approved is only one hurdle. Managing public perception is another, especially if there are concerns about the vaccine being mishandled during transportation and storage.

许多科学家对新冠病毒疫苗的研发速度表示担忧。但疫苗获批只是障碍之一。如何应对公众的看法则是另一个，特别是如果人们担心疫苗在运输和储存过程中处理不当的话。

Most vaccines have to be kept at low temperatures from the time they are manufactured to the time they are administered to prevent them from spoiling — what the industry calls a “cold chain.” The flu vaccine, for example, needs to stay refrigerated, at between 2 and 8 degrees Celsius.

大多数疫苗从生产到注射过程中都必须低温保存，以防止损坏——即业界所称的“冷链”。例如，流感疫苗需要在2到8摄氏度的环境下冷藏。

That could complicate the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine. A number of the leading candidates under development would need to be kept at temperatures as low as minus 80 degrees Celsius (minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit).

这可能会使新冠疫苗的分发复杂化。许多正在研发的领先候选疫苗都需要保存在最低至零下80摄氏度（零下112华氏度）的低温之下。

In the United States, transportation and warehouse companies are scrambling to build “freezer farms.” Airlines are fitting their planes with freezers, and glass vial makers are inventing methods to make vials that do not crack from very cold temperatures. Courier services like UPS and FedEx are making dry ice.

在美国，运输和仓储公司正争相建造“冷冻农场”。航空公司在飞机上安装了冷冻柜，玻璃瓶制造商也在研发保证药瓶在极低温度下不会破裂的办法。UPS和联邦快递(FedEx)等快递公司正在制造干冰。

But cold facilities are lacking in other parts of the world, including Central America, rural India and Southeast Asia, which experts say could hinder mass immunization.

但在中美洲、印度农村和东南亚等世界其他地区，专家称冷冻设施的缺乏可能会阻碍大规模免疫接种。

Typically, multiple reports of adverse reactions from vaccines are investigated by a country’s drug regulator in an attempt to determine the frequency of such events and whether there are causal links. While these investigations are underway, countries can choose to continue the vaccination program if the benefits are considered to outweigh the risks.

通常，一个国家的药品监管机构会对疫苗不良反应的多次报告进行调查，以确定此类事件发生的频率以及是否存在因果关系。在进行这些调查的同时，如果认为收益大过风险，各国可以选择继续实施疫苗接种计划。

Choe Sang-Hun是《纽约时报》首尔分社社长，主要报道朝韩两国方面的新闻。
黄瑞黎是《纽约时报》北京分社记者。她报道中国近十年，关注社会议题、性别、基因监测、医疗保健以及人口和经济的交叉议题。欢迎在Twitter上关注她 @suilee。
翻译：Harry Wong
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