Medical experts say the South Korea government is not taking the steps necessary to achieve its goal of reaching herd immunity to the coronavirus through mass vaccinations by November.

They say the government has failed to secure enough vaccines and has also been slow to train staff for storage, distribution and inoculation. It has also lagged in making decisions over vaccination sites, they said, according to a Reuters report.

The government's timeline — which calls for vaccinations of key individuals to begin in February, with 32 million-36m people vaccinated by September — is unlikely to succeed at its current pace, the experts said.

To reach the September target, the government would need 4,000 doctors to see at least 400,000 people a day, said Jun Byung-yool, a former director of the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.