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A line of people waiting to be tested for COVID-19 spills out of a temporary screening station at Seoul Station in central Seoul on Sunday. (Yonhap News)

South Korea’s daily average of new COVID-19 cases was under 4,000 last week, and the number of patients currently hospitalized with serious cases of the disease has dropped below 900. But as the Omicron strain of the COVID-19 virus sweeps the globe, the number of COVID-19 cases imported from overseas has sharply increased to around 200 for the last few days.

Korea’s Central Disaster Management Headquarters (CDMH) and Central Disease Control Headquarters (CDCH) announced on Sunday that in the first week of January, an average of 3,682 daily cases of COVID-19 were reported in the first week of January (Jan. 2-8). That represented a decline of 1,063 from the daily average of 4,745 cases in the last week of December (Dec. 26-Jan. 1).

The number of patients hospitalized with serious or critical cases of COVID-19 declined for four days in a row from Thursday to Sunday (882, 839, 838 and 821).

“The average daily caseload has decreased by about 1,000 from a week prior. The number of patients in serious and critical condition is also showing a marked decline, falling below 900 for the first time in 24 days, since Dec. 13 of last year,” the CDMH said.

But the number of COVID-19 patients around the world is evidently skyrocketing as the Omicron variant continues to spread. The World Health Organization announced that 9,520,488 new cases of COVID-19 were reported around the world during the period between Dec. 27 and Jan. 1, an increase of 70.9% from the previous week. The number of deaths during the same period was 41,178, down 9.6%.

In the US, which is reporting its biggest surge in cases so far in the pandemic, the number of hospitalized patients aged 17 and below increased by 11.4% in a single week, which was the biggest jump among all age groups. The UK set a new record for weekly cases for the third week in a row, while France did the same for the fourth week in a row. Cases in Japan have also been on the rise for five weeks now.

Korea is no exception when it comes to concerns about the spread of the Omicron variant. On Saturday, 236 cases of COVID-19 were detected among people arriving from overseas. The only time there have been more imported cases was on July 22 of last year, when there were 309 such cases in an infection cluster in Korea’s Cheonghae Unit.

Over the past week, the number of imported cases has clearly been trending upward: 135, 135, 210, 194, 188, 210 and 236.

“There’s a clear trend for record-setting figures in the US and in Europe, which are regions that have a lot of commerce with Korea. More patients are arriving in Korea after being infected overseas,” the CDCH said.

“We’re continuing to assess changes in external factors related to Omicron, including the occurrence [of cases] both in Korea and overseas and the results of our risk assessment. Based on that, we’ll review the efficacy of our current measures and supplemental measures that can be taken during a meeting to assess cases arriving from overseas and a meeting of the cross-ministerial task force for responding to new variants,” the CDCH continued.

Last week, Korea administered COVID-19 booster shots to 2.53 million more people, bringing the total to 21,016,097 by the end of the day on Sunday. The number of people aged 60 and up who have gotten a third COVID-19 shot is above 11.14 million, amounting to 81.1% of that age group. Members of this age group face a high risk of contracting serious or fatal cases of COVID-19.

By Lim Jae-hee, staff reporter

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