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Staff at the emergency response situation room in Seoul’s Songpa District Office point at a bar graph of domestic COVID-19 cases on July 19. (Yonhap News)

The highly transmissible and immune-evasive BA.5 subvariant COVID-19 is close to becoming the dominant form of the virus in Korea. The number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 has surged, exceeding 70,000 for the first time since the end of April. This is a month faster than disease control authorities had predicted.

Yonhap News Agency’s tally of new confirmed COVID-19 cases nationwide on Tuesday showed 73,301 new confirmed cases from 12:01 am to 9 pm that day. That marks two consecutive days of cases numbering above 70,000, following 74,497 cases at the same time the previous day.

Earlier, the Central Disease Control Headquarters (CDCH) announced that there were 73,582 new confirmed cases as of the end of the day Monday. It is the first time in 83 days, since April 27, that the number of new confirmed cases in a day has exceeded 70,000. This is a major surge compared to the 37,360 recorded cases on Tuesday of last week.

Initially, disease control authorities had predicted on July 12 that Korea could expect around 20,000 to 40,000 confirmed cases per day by the end of July. They also predicted that the number of confirmed cases per day would be between 70,000 to 160,000 near the end of August.

Lim Suk-yeong, a senior official at the CDCH, announced new predictions that took into account the accelerated spread of the virus. “We predict that we’ll reach the peak [of infections] between mid- to late August, with [daily case numbers] possibly reaching a maximum of 270,000 to 280,000.”

The BA.5 subvariant has played a decisive role in the aggressive resurgence in domestic cases. The subvariant spreads about 35% faster than the “stealth” Omicron subvariant, BA.2, and has excellent immune evasion ability.

The detection rate of BA.5 infections in Korea in the second week of July was 47.2% (52% including cases from overseas). Once it passes the 50% mark, the BA.5 variant will become the dominant form of COVID-19 in Korea.

By Park June-yong, staff reporter

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