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On Sunday, when a record-breaking number of serious or critically ill patients was recorded, medical workers transfer a patient from an ambulance to a dedicated COVID-19 hospital in Seoul’s Jungnang District. (Yonhap News)

South Korea has now recorded its first instances of Omicron breakthrough infections in individuals who had previously received booster shots.

According to a report by the Central Disease Control Headquarters on current cases of the Omicron variant in South Korea and related epidemiological findings released Sunday, four of the 178 individuals who have tested positive for the Omicron variant had tested positive for the virus despite having received a third COVID-19 shot.

Of the 178 cases of the Omicron variant confirmed as of 6 pm Saturday, more than half (51.68%) occurred in individuals who were not fully vaccinated, with 88 cases in unvaccinated individuals and four in individuals who had received only their first dose of the vaccine. Another 74 of the confirmed cases were in individuals fully vaccinated with two doses, while four cases occurred in those who had received their third shots.

In terms of age distribution, 81 patients with the Omicron variant were between the ages of 20 and 39, the most represented age group, followed by those under 20 years of age, which numbered 47. Another 37 patients were between the ages of 40 and 59, while 13 of the patients were 60 and above.

Since the first suspected case of the Omicron variant was detected in Korea on Nov. 30, the number of confirmed Omicron cases has steadily increased, with 12 new cases of the variant added to the total tally as of the end of Saturday.

The Omicron variant was confirmed to have entered South Korea before Nov. 28, when the South Korean government banned foreign arrivals from eight countries including South Africa in order to prevent the influx of the new COVID-19 variant into the nation. The first individual to test positive for the Omicron variant entered South Korea on Nov. 23 from Nigeria, and others infected with the variant arrived in South Korea from Iran and Russia before the entry ban was put in place.

The countries from which these first positive cases of the Omicron variant in South Korea arrived were not one of the eight countries — South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi — targeted by the South Korean government’s entry ban on foreigners.

In other words, though South Korea followed the lead of the US and Europe and instituted a preemptive ban on foreign arrivals from African countries, by the time the ban was in place, the Omicron variant had already entered the country from countries not covered by the entry ban.

Of the confirmed cases of the Omicron variant in South Korea, 13 arrived from South Africa and the US each, followed by 10 from Nigeria and six from the United Kingdom.

By Kwon Ji-dam, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]