ANDONG, North Gyeongsang Province -- Researchers wearing blue personal protective equipment hunker down over digital screens and packaging machine belts as thousands of syringes are briskly moved through machines at SK bioscience’s vaccine manufacturing facility, L HOUSE, in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, Tuesday.

After going through a series of procedures such as being analyzed for their defection rate and having plunger rods inserted into the syringes, the drugs are labeled and packed into a box, to be sent to local hospitals for seasonal flu shots.

The pre-filled syringes in question are South Korean drugmaker SK bioscience´s influenza vaccines, SKYCellflu, which resumed production for the first time after a two-year hiatus. In 2021, SK bioscience had decided to direct the majority of its production capacity into manufacturing SKYCovione, the nation´s first homegrown COVID-19 vaccine.