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A monitor installed outside of a COVID-19 screening center in northern Gwangju’s Buk District displays the number of recent confirmed cases of the virus on Dec. 9 (Yonhap News)

South Korea’s battle to contain the COVID-19 pandemic has been growing more challenging recently amid a drastic increase in the number of new cases and patients in serious condition. The government belatedly published the case fatality rate, an indicator of the severity of the outbreak in the country, but it has yet to release precise figures about the number of beds available in critical care units. That leads some to say that the government’s disease control efforts are losing credibility.

Korea’s Central Disease Control Headquarters announced on Monday that the country’s case fatality rate in November was 1.12%. That was nearly double the rate in October (0.64%), shortly before Korea began relaxing restrictions as it returned to normal routines.

The case fatality rate represents the percentage of positive cases of COVID-19 that end in death. As such, it provides an express assessment of the government’s success at managing the pandemic.

The month of November saw a strong surge of COVID-19 as the daily caseload rose by approximately 3,000 after the return to normal routines. But the case fatality rate in November wasn’t published until the end of December.

The government rebutted local press reports that Korea was one of the world’s only major countries in which the case fatality rate had gone up after achieving a high vaccination rate and easing restrictions. But officials didn’t disclose the case fatality rate for November, explaining that they needed more time for a precise calculation.

On Dec. 9, a government official told a reporter that it was “not true” that Korea’s case fatality rate was the second highest among major countries. The official argued that Korea’s cumulative case fatality rate (as of Dec. 4) was 0.8%, lower than the US (1.6%), the UK (1.4%), Germany (1.7%), Spain (1.7%), Japan (1.1%) and Canada (1.7%).

The cumulative case fatality rate mentioned by the government includes the entire period of the pandemic and thus fails to reflect how the situation in Korea has worsened since the return to regular routines began in early November.

The case fatality rate for November that the government released on Monday is based on the clinical results of individual patients, which makes it a precise indicator that can be quoted in academic studies.

Our World in Data, the international statistics website, said that Korea had a case fatality rate of 1.2% as of Dec. 18, based on an analysis of COVID-19 data from Johns Hopkins University. (That rate represents the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the week prior to Dec. 18 as a percentage of the number of confirmed cases in the week prior to Dec. 8.)

That’s higher than in major countries — the US is at 1%, Japan 0.8%, Germany 0.76%, the UK 0.23% and Singapore 0.4%. In effect, Our World in Data’s figures show the situation in Korea faster than the government’s own figures.

Setting aside the case fatality rate, the government has yet to release mortality figures for people who contracted the virus in group homes. While analysts attribute the surge in patients with serious and critical cases of COVID-19 to breakthrough and cluster infections at nursing homes and other group homes, the government isn’t releasing figures about how many elderly people died at such facilities before they could be transferred to a hospital.

The government categorizes nursing homes as medical facilities, but public health practitioners argue that nursing homes aren’t capable of treating COVID-19 patients.

Nor has the government provided precise figures for the hospital space available for treating patients with serious or critical cases of COVID-19 — a group that recently rose above 1,000. Facing repeated requests for information from the press, a government official said that “630 beds (62.1%) have been secured to treat people with semi-serious or serious cases of COVID-19 in keeping with five administrative orders since August.”

By lumping together hospital beds for semi-serious and serious cases instead of listing them separately, the government inflated the number of available beds. Since the return to normal routines began on Nov. 1, the number of beds for serious cases has only increased by 254 to a total of 1,337, reports have confirmed.

Despite the government’s assertion that 1,337 beds are available for people with serious cases of COVID-19, public health practitioners argue that there aren’t enough medical staff around to handle that many patients. That explains why front-line workers are reporting a surge in serious patients who are struggling to get admitted to a hospital even though the government claims there’s enough hospital space.

Critics say the public health authorities’ lack of transparency in releasing information will inevitably weaken the government’s policy response and degrade public trust.

“The government is releasing data selectively in order to implement policy as intended, and it’s losing trust because of the lack of transparent information disclosure,” said Kim Yoon, a professor of health policy and management at Seoul National University.

“When local hospitals report suspected cases of adverse reactions to vaccination, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency often doesn’t recognize them. If the authorities were to publish data about their rationale for doing so with greater speed and transparency, they’d probably be able to increase trust in vaccines.”

By Lee Jae-ho, staff reporter

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