hankyoreh

Two workers at the Songpa Health Center in Seoul converse on Nov. 28, one having sealed their protective attire with tape. (Baek So-ah/The Hankyoreh)

With South Korea’s daily COVID-19 caseload hovering around 7,000, the country has set new records for both the weekly number of COVID-19 deaths and the daily number of serious and critical patients. There are also more COVID-19 patients on the waiting list for hospital beds than ever before.

With Korea’s medical system essentially malfunctioning, on Saturday, the government inquired about imposing additional COVID-19 restrictions to the government panel in charge of aiding the return to normal routines. The government is expected to announce special disease control measures by the middle of this week at the earliest.

According to figures from the Central Disease Control Headquarters, Korea reported 43 deaths from COVID-19 by the end of the day Saturday. Over the past week (Dec. 5-11), 401 people have died from the disease. That was the largest number of weekly deaths in Korea since the COVID-19 outbreak began. Friday, Dec. 10, saw the most deaths to occur on a single day, with 80 people having died from COVID-19.

The number of COVID-19 deaths has recently been sharply increasing. Daily average of deaths rose from 43 the week before last (Nov. 27-Dec. 4) to 57 last week. That’s more than triple the daily average of deaths from a month ago (16) and more than double the average during the third wave of the disease.

In the first week of January (Jan. 4-10), when the third wave was at its peak, Korea reported 163 total deaths related to COVID-19, for a daily average of 23. Korea’s disease control authorities explained on Thursday that “the percentage of [new cases occurring in] older people [aged 60 and above] was 20% until two or three months ago but has now risen to around 35%.”

As the upsurge in cases continues, hospitals remain packed, and the number of patients in serious or critical condition has risen rapidly. As of Sunday, there were 894 serious or critical cases, while 1,739 patients had been waiting for a hospital bed for at least a day — both of which were pandemic records.

As of 5 pm on Saturday, 1,031 of 1,276 beds were in use in COVID-19 intensive care wards around the country, representing an occupancy rate of 80.8%. Even worse, wards in the greater Seoul area had an occupancy rate of 86.5%. The Korean authorities reported 6,689 new cases of COVID-19 on Sunday, continuing a trend of caseloads in the region of 7,000 that began on Tuesday, Dec. 7.

The government has taken several measures in recent days. On Dec. 6, it reduced the maximum size of private gatherings to six in the greater Seoul area and eight in other parts of the country, and on Friday, it halved the waiting period for booster shots from six months to three months for people aged 18 and above. But experts assert that these measures haven’t been enough to counter the current surge or compensate for the shortage of hospital beds.

“This situation is bound to continue unless we reduce the size of the outbreak itself. Measures need to be taken to limit contact between people, but that won’t be effective unless it’s tied to compensation for damages,” said Jung Jae-hun, a professor of preventive medicine at Gachon University Gil Medical Center, in a telephone interview with the Hankyoreh.

“We need tougher methods if we’re going to stop the spread in the short term. There needs to be a discussion of a lockdown, which would limit social and economic activity and cause doors to be shut after 6 pm with the assumption of definite compensation for harm to small business owners,” said Eom Joong-sik, a professor in the department of infectious disease at Gachon University Gil Medical Center.

The government is also holding discussions about taking additional measures to get the spread under control, such as toughening social distancing.

“The government will be forced to take special disease control measures, including tough social distancing, if it decides the crisis isn’t likely to turn around,” Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said on Friday. A more specific discussion of what that would entail is currently underway.

On Saturday, the government submitted a written request to the disease control and medical care subcommittee of Committee on the Recovery of Normal Life from COVID-19, the panel that advises the government on disease control policy, for its opinion about additional COVID-19 restrictions. After canvassing the opinions of panel members on other subcommittees, the government is expected to announce tougher disease control restrictions as early as the middle of this week.

By Park Jun-yong and Kwon Ji-dam, staff reporters

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