Infections surpass 90,000 and show no signs of flagging

Social Affairs

Published: 16 Feb. 2022, 17:53 Updated: 16 Feb. 2022, 19:35

Infections surpass 90,000 and show no signs of flagging

Medicine recommended for at-home care Covid-19 patients is displayed in front of a pharmacy in Seoul on Wednesday. Starting Wednesday, all local pharmacies were permitted to fill Covid-19 prescriptions, except for Paxlovid. [NEWS1]

Daily Covid-19 infections shot up to over 90,000 cases on Wednesday — and experts say the country's peak is still ahead.

Korea reported a record 90,443 new Covid-19 cases Wednesday, rising by 33,268 or 58.1 percent from the previous day. The country’s total caseload stood at 1,552,851, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

After announcing the record case count, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said he was “sorry in many ways to people who have been cooperating.”

The number of new cases in Korea has been doubling every week since Omicron became its dominant strain of Covid-19.

The daily infection count broke the 10,000 mark for the first time on Jan. 26, and just a week later, on Feb. 2, it surpassed 20,000.

The figure came near 50,000 on Feb. 9 and nearly doubled to a record of above 90,000 on Wednesday.

Critical cases stayed in the 300s for three days straight and recorded 313 Wednesday, while 39 new virus deaths were reported.

Other parts in the world hit by the Omicron wave, such as Britain, the United States, and South Africa, reached their peaks a month ago. European countries begun lifting virus regulations, such as dropping indoor mask requirements, as they passed their peaks. Cautious assumptions have been made that Germany and Japan — which saw soaring numbers of cases recently — have also passed their peak. According to Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the public health authority for disease control, the number of new infections peaked at 247,862 cases on Feb. 10, which fell to 159,217 on Tuesday. Japan’s Covid-19 cases seem to have peaked on Feb. 5.

After Korea detected its first Omicron patient on Dec. 1, it took about seven weeks for the strain to become dominant, which was made official in the third week of January. That process took three weeks in the U.S. and Britain, and four weeks in Japan.

Considering that gap, Korea is projected to reach its own peak possibly next week.

"Omicron started to spread the week before the Lunar New Year holidays [Jan. 29 to Feb. 2], and if Korea follows other countries' patterns, it could reach its peak next week,” Oh Myoung-don, a professor of infectious disease at the Seoul National University Hospital, who leads the National Medical Center‘s committee for clinical management of emerging disease control, told the JoongAng Ilbo.

"We will find out which pattern Korea is heading toward early next week," Oh said. "It is too early to conclude that Korea is showing a different pattern and characteristics from other countries.”

The KDCA commissioner Jeong Eun-kyeong earlier made a forecast that “new Covid-19 patients could possibly reach between 130,000 and 170,000 at the end of February.”

Kim Woo-joo, a professor of infectious disease at Korea University Guro Hospital, said, “The next three or four weeks will be a big crisis,” adding, “cases will not start to decrease until April."

Kim Tak, a professor of infectious disease at Soonchunhyang University Hospital Bucheon, said, “Considering that Koreans follow the public health measures well, the wave’s peak may arrive later and the its height may be lower,” while adding, “it will take more time for the wave to transition into a downward trend.”

Although daily infections are hitting record highs, some experts say the actual number could higher due to limited polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing.

Since Feb. 3, health authorities have been reserving the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for high risk groups, such as people over the age of 59 and people living with a virus patient. All other members of the public are instead offered rapid antigen test kits, which are less accurate.

“PCR tests used to detect around half of the infected people [in the community], but now that has fallen to one third [of the previous level],” said Jung Jae-hun, a professor of preventive medicine at Gachon University College of Medicine.

“The sensitivity of home testing kits is low [meaning they return false negative results], thus not many people will be confirmed of Covid-19 with the kits,” said Kim from Korea University Guro Hospital.

The government declared several times since Omicron became the dominant strain that it would expand its PCR capacity up to 850,000 a day. But even when confirmed patients soared to 50,000, the number of PCR tests conducted a day — around 500,000 — did not change much compared to when daily cases were hovering around 3,000 to 5,000.

To prevent a surge ahead of the spring semester, the education ministry strongly advised all students Wednesday to take rapid antigen tests twice a week and teachers once a week before coming to school.

The ministry will offer 60.5 million free home testing kits to a total of 6.92 million students and faculty members in the country, the Education Ministry Yoo Eun-hye said.

They will be asked to test themselves at home and share the results via the government “Health Self-check” mobile application, which has been used for students to record their health condition every day before coming to school during the pandemic. If they test positive, they will have to take PCR tests at public health centers or at district or gu offices.

As the regular rapid antigen testing policy stirred controversy even before being finalized, education officials decided to leave the measures as “recommendations” and not mandatory.

"The rapid antigen test will be operated as a voluntary public health system and will not be compulsory for parents and students," Yoo said. "Because it is not mandatory, students will be allowed to attend school even if they didn’t conduct a test."

BY SHIN SUNG-SIK, SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun1@joongang.co.kr]