17 die after flu vaccination

The number of people who died in South Korea after being vaccinated against seasonal flu has risen to 17, the Yonhap news agency reported on Thursday.

In the earlier hours of the day, a 74-year-old resident of the northwestern city of Incheon died two days after the seasonal flu vaccination.

However, the country’s authorities said they had investigated nine suspicious deaths and saw no link between the vaccination and the fatalities.

One of the possible explanation for the deaths was an anaphylactic shock, a severe allergic reaction to the vaccine, but this hypothesis had not been confirmed yet.

Meanwhile, some 12.97 million have already been vaccinated against seasonal flu in South Korea.