A monthly analysis of COVID-19 outcomes in South Korea shows that the case fatality rate in June was one-tenth of the month when the rate was the highest. That underlines the effectiveness of Korea’s vaccination program, which has focused on elderly people, who constitute the high-risk group for COVID-19, according to the Central Disease Control Headquarters (CDCH).

The case fatality rate is defined as the percentage of confirmed cases of COVID-19 that end in death.

The CDCH on Tuesday released its analysis of the case fatality rate and the percentage of serious or critical cases in each month since February 2020, soon after the novel coronavirus reached Korea.

The case fatality rate was highest in March 2020 (2.87%), during Korea’s first wave of COVID-19, and came close to that in December 2020 (2.70%), during the third wave of the outbreak. But the case fatality rate last month, after Korea began inoculating its population, was 0.24%, about one-tenth of the highest level.

Broken down by month, the rate of cases that become serious or critical rose to 5.90% in September 2020 but declined to 2.22% last month. And during the past three weeks, from June 20 to July 10, the serious and critical case rate for people aged 60 and above fell by more than half, from 10.1% to 4.8%.

“Our analysis is that the serious and critical case rate remains low even after we recently entered the fourth wave of the outbreak because our aggressive vaccination of people aged 60 and over has suppressed the incidence of disease in the high-risk cohort,” the CDCH said.

But caution is still needed since the serious and critical case rate remains above 1% among people below 60 years of age, a group that has been reporting a lot of cases recently. The number of patients below the age of 60 has jumped from 3,251 to 6,801 over the past three weeks, while the number of serious or critical patients and fatalities in that age group has nearly doubled, from 40 to 77.

“The severe and critical case rate remains above 1% in people below 60 years of age, which means that this shouldn’t be dismissed as a mild disease. We’re asking people to strictly abide by social distancing and disease control measures until the vaccination campaign is complete,” the CDCH said.

By Kim Ji-hoon, staff reporter

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