South Korea's president could be under pressure to seek Biden's help on Covid vaccines

South Korean President Moon Jae-in would be seeking U.S. President Joe Biden's help on securing Covid-19 vaccines when the leaders meet in Washington on Friday, according to one foreign policy expert.

"I think the South Koreans have put a very big emphasis on vaccine diplomacy as being the big deliverable of this summit," Victor Cha, a professor and vice dean at Georgetown University, told CNBC's "Street Signs Asia" on Friday.

The meeting with Moon will be Biden's second in-person summit with a country leader. Last month, the U.S. president met Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Washington.

Domestic pressure has mounted on Moon to push for faster deliveries of vaccines as rising Covid cases have forced authorities to extend social-distancing measures multiple times. Moon has pledged to reach "herd immunity" by November, but a global shortage of vaccines threatens his pledge. Herd immunity happens when enough people in the population are vaccinated or infected, and the disease can no longer spread wildly.

Around 7.34% of the South Korean population has received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, according to data by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

South Korea on Friday approved Moderna's Covid vaccine — the fourth approval after giving the green light to those developed by AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson, reported Reuters.

The shortage of vaccines comes as infections rise over the past month. South Korean authorities on Friday extended social-distancing measures for another three weeks given that daily cases are still high.

The country has reported a total of more than 134,600 confirmed cases of Covid-19 since the start of last year, with 1,922 deaths, according to the latest official data.

(CNBC)