hankyoreh

People wait in line outside of a temporary screening station outside of Seoul Station to be tested for COVID-19 on March 1. (Yonhap News)

The number of new daily confirmed COVID-19 cases in South Korea dropped below 200,000 on Wednesday after reaching nearly 220,000 the day before.

Despite hopeful predictions that the decline after approaching the 220,000-case mark might mean the current surge has reached its peak, disease control authorities stressed that South Korea has not yet seen the peak of this wave of infections. The Tuesday total came a week ahead of March 9, when disease control authorities had originally predicted the number of new daily confirmed cases would top 230,000.

As of the end of the day Wednesday, the number of new daily confirmed cases stood at 198,803. The day before, it had reached 219,240, which was the largest total anywhere in the world according to the global statistics site Worldometer.

In a briefing Wednesday, Lee Sang-won, director of epidemiological research and analysis for the Central Disease Control Headquarters, said, “Since the Omicron variant has become the predominant variant later in South Korea than in other countries, we’re still heading toward our peak right now, which means it is impossible to draw any comparisons in terms of the timeline.”

Remarking on the decline in the new daily caseload, Lee said, “The rise does seem to have abated, but there is still a trend of increase.”

“Without question, we are approaching the peak, which should be reached in the near future,” he added.

Recently, the trend in new confirmed cases in South Korea has been one of all-time high peaks followed by small declines and then renewed increases.

After reaching nearly 110,000 on Feb. 18, the new daily caseload fell as low at 99,568 on Feb. 22, only to top 170,000 on Feb. 23, which was a Wednesday.

Similarly, the caseload topped 160,000 on Feb. 25 before falling below 140,000 on March 1 and then exploding to over 219,000 on March 2.

“Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the days of the week when testing is most active, which means the findings tend to be most in line with the actual projections, with declines on other days of the week,” explained Jung Jae-hun, a professor of preventive medicine at Gachon University’s College of Medicine.

“It appears that we’ll reach our peak sometime around March 13 or 14, when the caseload is expected to be as many as 260,000 to 270,000 patients,” he predicted.

Heo Tag, a professor of emergency medicine at Chonnam National University, said, “It looks like the number of patients is going to be fluctuating for some time.”

“It’s tough to recognize the peak when it comes — you can only see it after about a week or so when there’s an inflection point and the number of patients drops,” he explained.

In particular, the decline on Wednesday was attributed to factors including the so-called “Wednesday effect” — with Wednesdays tending to see the largest numbers of confirmed cases — and an unusually large jump in testing on Feb. 28.

As of the end of the day Monday, a total of 717,987 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests had been performed, or more than double the 343,029 performed the day before. The number dropped by nearly half to 387,166 the following day on Tuesday.

“The number of people being tested appears to have risen with the start of the spring semester coming up and [Monday] being the day before the March 1 holiday,” explained a Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency official in a telephone interview with the Hankyoreh.

Some analysts have worried that South Korea is inadequately prepared for the peak in cases, especially amid concerns about increased activity with the start of the school year on Thursday and the upcoming presidential election on March 9.

“If an even bigger surge happens among young students returning to school, we could end up seeing average caseloads of over 200,000 next week,” predicted Eom Joong-sik, a professor of infectious disease at Gachon University Gil Medical Center.

“The administration is saying that it has a stable supply of over 2,000 hospital beds for patients with severe or critical symptoms, but if you take into account the lack of staffing and equipment such as ventilators, the number of fully functioning critical care beds is going to be less than that,” he cautioned.

By Jang Hyeon-eun, staff reporter; Kwon Ji-dam, staff reporter

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