hankyoreh

In this undated photo, medical workers can be seen preparing to administer COVID-19 tests at a temporary screening station set up in Seoul Plaza in the capital’s Jung District. (Baek So-ah/The Hankyoreh)

Late Sunday evening, a 67-year-old resident of Seoul’s Dongdaemun District began experiencing trouble breathing while recuperating at home after testing positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 30.

Around midnight, the patient’s family alerted physicians in charge of patients undergoing at-home treatment. The patient suffered from preexisting conditions, including diabetes and hypertension.

The physicians attempted to find a hospital bed for the patient, but the process became delayed. Around 25 minutes later, the family called the 119 emergency service number, and an ambulance was sent over.

The patient arrived at the hospital around 1 am, but their heart had stopped. They were pronounced dead on Monday morning.

In Paju, Gyeonggi Province, a woman in her 80s who had tested positive for the COVID-19 virus died at her home on Tuesday while waiting for a hospital bed.

Emergency medical workers were dispatched to her home after being told her condition had deteriorated, but by the time they arrived, the woman had already died.

With South Korea’s new daily confirmed COVID-19 case numbers consistently topping 5,000 — and even exceeding 7,000 on Tuesday — the number of patients on standby for hospital beds has been growing.

Already, there have been multiple cases where patients unable to secure a bed — despite their advanced age and preexisting conditions — have experienced rapid declines in their condition and ended up passing away at home.

According to figures provided Wednesday by the Central Disease Control Headquarters (CDCH), a total of 29 COVID-19 patients died while waiting for a hospital bed over the five-week period from Oct. 31 to Dec. 4. Nineteen of them died without being able to find a hospital bed despite over 24 hours elapsing since their diagnosis.

Twenty-eight patients were in their 60s or older, while 26 were confirmed to have preexisting conditions.

Between late October and mid-November, around one to three patients per week died while waiting for a hospital bed. The number has been rising sharply, with 10 cases between Nov. 21 and 27 and 13 cases between Nov. 28 and Dec. 4.

While the South Korean government continues to focus its policy approach on at-home recuperation, disease control authorities have not been tallying statistics on deaths among at-home patients.

But it is known that one patient died in October while recovering at home, and the 67-year-old patient in Dongdaemun died shortly after being taken to the hospital after recuperating at home.

Healthcare professionals have pointed to cases where patients remaining at home began experiencing severe symptoms.

“A lot of the people receiving at-home care recently have been older patients, and there have been cases where they’ve had to remain at home without being transported [to a hospital] right away when their oxygen levels have dropped below 90%,” a nurse at a public hospital in the greater Seoul area told the Hankyoreh on Wednesday.

The number of COVID-19 patients currently undergoing home care rather than receiving treatment at a hospital is currently well above 10,000. As of the end of the day Tuesday, 17,362 patients were subject to at-home care — nearly double the 8,990 counted on Nov. 29, when the government announced plans for making at-home recovery the default approach to treatment.

As of Wednesday, 860 patients were waiting for hospital beds. The number has consistently remained above 700 since Nov. 21.

The rise in confirmed cases and the shortage of beds are making at-home care more or less unavoidable. The problem is the absence of any clear signs of improvements to address the adverse effects.

The government has announced plans to make the bed allocation process more efficient and to comprehensively manage at-home care, but it lacks the necessary personnel.

“The number of staff assigned to duties related to people waiting for beds is too small right now compared with other areas such as epidemiological investigations,” said a source at one public health center in Seoul.

“They need to prioritize duties related to sickbed allocation and management,” they urged.

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

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