Daily Covid cases blow past 200,000

Social Affairs

Published: 02 Mar. 2022, 17:21 Updated: 03 Mar. 2022, 14:06

Daily Covid cases blow past 200,000

A teacher checks whether all of her students have received Covid-19 antigen home test kits at an elementary school in Daegu on Wednesday, as the spring semester for most schools nationwide started amid record-breaking Covid cases. [YONHAP]

With Omicron spreading fast, Korea’s daily Covid-19 count nearly reached 220,000 on Wednesday, about a week earlier than the government expected.

The country reported a record high 219,241 new Covid-19 cases Wednesday, raising the total caseload to 3,492,686, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). This was the first time the daily count passed 200,000. It rose by 80,248 cases from the previous day.

On Monday, Jeong Eun-kyeong, the country’s top infectious disease expert, made a prediction based on domestic and foreign analyses that the daily tally would top 230,000 around March 9, the day of Korea's presidential election. The latest surge is advancing that forecast by a week.

The Omicron peak was projected to arrive in early to mid-March, with new cases potentially reaching between 180,000 to 350,000.

Yet authorities said the growth rate itself is slowing, which indicates the country is approaching its virus peak.

“Cases in Korea had been doubling every week,” Son Young-rae, senior epidemiological strategist at the Central Disaster Management Headquarters, said in a MBC radio interview on Wednesday, “but the growth rate has begun to slow down little by little since last week, and this week's rate slowed considerably.

"If the growth rate continues to slow down as it is now, we can perceive that we are getting close to the virus peak,” Son said.

The number of new cases in Korea doubled every week since the highly transmissible Omicron became the dominant strain of Covid-19, but since the middle of last week, the growth slightly slowed to around 1.3- to 1.5-fold.

Wednesday’s figure is 2.4 times larger than the 90,439 cases recorded two weeks ago on Feb. 16, but only 1.3 times larger than the 171,451 cases registered on Feb. 23, which was the previous Covid-19 record.

But the number of patients in critical condition is continuing to climb.

The country’s critical cases totaled 762 as of Wednesday, adding 35 from the previous day.

Critical cases went past 300 on Jan. 14, and then increased rapidly. They have been hovering above 700 for three days in a row.

Authorities believe critically ill patients will rise to over 1,200 around next Monday, and to between 1,700 to 2,750 around March 16 to 31.

Ninety-six more people died of Covid-19 over the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 8,266.

While Korea hasn't yet hit its peak, the government is reviewing easing social distancing measures sooner than planned.

Although the current distancing measures — including a cap on private gatherings of up to six and business curfews at 10 p.m. — are set to expire on March 13, the government decided to review readjusting the rules after seeing a decrease in the fatality rate from Omicron's spread and mounting losses by small business owners.

The government has already stopped checking vaccine passes at restaurants and bars and lifted the quarantine mandate for cohabitants living with a Covid-19 patient.

“Considering the fast transmission of Omicron, the efficiency of strengthening the distancing rules to block the spread is low,” Son said in a press briefing. “As of now, we are focusing on minimizing critical cases and fatalities [...] rather than suppressing new infections.”

As the recent uptick in Covid-19 cases is putting more strain on the testing capacity, results from rapid antigen tests conducted at medical clinics or hospitals — which use a deeper nasopharyngeal swab than the widely-distributed home test kits — may be used for virus-related prescriptions or treatments.

Currently, only people who test positive from PCR tests are classified as Covid-19 patients. But the free PCR tests are only available to high risk groups — such as the elderly and cohabitants of virus patients — and others must test positive from a rapid antigen test to get a PCR test, causing delays in the diagnosis and isolation of patients.

Acknowledging such concerns, the KDCA is reorganizing its computer system to approve positive test results from rapid antigen tests within this month, according to a report from the JoongAng Ilbo.

Rapid antigen home test kits aren't being considered, authorities said, due to their lack of sensitivity.

BY SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun1@joongang.co.kr]