Cases over 100,000 for third day, critical patients remain in 400s

Social Affairs

Published: 20 Feb. 2022, 19:03

Cases over 100,000 for third day, critical patients remain in 400s

A sign's wording is changed to show the extended hours of restaurants and cafes from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. under the eased social distancing measures, put up on the window of a restaurant in Jongno District, central Seoul on Sunday. [YONHAP]

Korea’s Covid-19 cases topped 100,000 for three consecutive days on Sunday, with patients in critical condition remaining above 400.

The country reported 104,829 new Covid-19 infections on Sunday, with all but 97 locally transmitted, raising the total caseload to 1,962,837, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

The number of critical cases rose by 31 to 439, staying above 400 for two days in a row.

Korea’s daily Covid-19 tally surpassed the 100,000-mark for the first time last Friday, and remained in the 100,000s for three days in a row despite the weekend when caseloads are usually lower due to fewer tests being conducted.

Sunday’s figure rose by 2,618 from the previous day, and is almost twice the size of the 56,430 cases registered a week ago on Feb. 13 and nearly three times larger than the 38,688 cases recorded two weeks ago on Feb. 6. The number of new cases in Korea has been doubling every week since the highly transmissible Omicron became its dominant strain of Covid-19.

Health authorities earlier forecasted that daily new Covid-19 patients could reach between 130,000 and 170,000 at the end of February.

However, according to the National Institute for Mathematical Sciences (NIMS), a state-run think tank, the peak will be even higher and could reach up to 270,000 cases around mid-March.

Despite repeated warnings by health experts, the government decided to relax the business curfew by one hour, explaining that it was “the minimum adjustment made considering the financial troubles of small business owners.”

Under the renewed nationwide social distancing measures announced last Friday, the curfew put on restaurants, cafes, bars and indoor sports facilities was extended from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. The measures went into effect from Saturday, which will last for three weeks until March 13. Regulations on other facilities such as hagwon (cram schools), PC bang (internet cafes), movie theaters and concert halls will stay the same, also having to close at 10 p.m.

The six-person cap on private gatherings was also kept.

However, a study released by the KDCA earlier showed that restrictions on business hours are more effective in public health than limiting private gatherings. The study, announced jointly by the KDCA and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) on Dec. 31 last year, showed extending the business hours of facilities just by an hour from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. increases the number of infections by 97 percent. On the other hand, when expanding the cap on social gatherings from four to eight while keeping business curfews at 9 p.m., the increase in infections was only 59 percent.

Experts pointed out that the government is sending the wrong signal to the public through its eased distancing measures amid the worst virus wave that the country has ever encountered.

Professor Lee Jae-gap of the Infectious Disease Department at Hallym University Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital, recently resigned from a government-private sector committee on the return to normalcy on Thursday in protest. While saying “the site is already hell,” he added that the discussion on easing the distancing measures should be discussed “at least after the virus has peaked.”

Some interpreted the government’s easing of business hours despite experts’ advice and scientific evidence as being due to political considerations.

“Looking at it positively, it may have been aimed at revitalizing the economy,” Jung Ki-suck, a professor of pulmonology at Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital and former director of the former Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), now the KDCA, said. “But in reality, it was probably because of the pressure from small business owners ahead of the presidential election.”

Meanwhile, the digital check-in system based on QR codes or calling a designated number for contact tracing was halted, once again making it possible to enter large supermarkets or department stores without having to scan a QR code.

QR scanners are installed at many venues in Korea, used to keep track of visitors' entry. However, as the country recently started making Covid-19 patients report to their own past locations and contacts voluntarily, some have argued that the digital check-in system is no longer needed.

Still, the vaccine pass system — which also uses QR codes — remains in place, thus visitors to facilities requiring vaccination records such as restaurants, cafes, noraebang (singing rooms), indoor sports facilities and saunas still have to show a QR code or another form of proof of vaccination such as by paper document.

"Most self-employed and small business owners say it is easier to check the visitors’ vaccination records through QR codes," said Son Young-rae, senior epidemiological strategist at the Central Disaster Management Headquarters, believing that many facilities will stick with checking QR codes as before.

While the country’s vaccine pass system is only applied to adults aged 19 or older, the system was set to be expanded to minors between the ages of 12 to 18 from March.

However, a court in Daejeon suspended the vaccine pass system of teenagers on Friday, following recent similar decisions by courts in Seoul and Gyeonggi.

To keep regulations between regions the same, the government on the same day decided to postpone the enforcement of minors’ vaccine pass by one month to April 1.

BY SEO JI-EUN, EO HWAN-HEE [seo.jieun1@joongang.co.kr]