Daily Covid deaths fall to 9

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Daily Covid deaths fall to 9

Published: 30 May. 2022, 17:26 Updated: 30 May. 2022, 18:16

A passenger enters the Airport Railroad Express (AREX) at Seoul Station in central Seoul on Monday. Operation of the AREX Express Train, which runs non-stop from Incheon International Airport to Seoul Station, resumed Monday after it was suspended in April 2020 due to a decrease in passengers amid the pandemic. [NEWS1]

Korea’s Covid-19 case counts fell further over the weekend to the 6,000s while deaths plunged to the single digits.

The country reported 6,139 new Covid-19 infections on Monday, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the lowest level since Jan. 19’s 5,804 cases. The total caseload came to 18,086,462.

Cases on Mondays tend to decline due to fewer tests conducted over weekends. Monday’s figure was down 38.4 percent from a week before, and down 53.8 percent from two Mondays ago.

Nine people died of Covid-19, the first time in seven months that fatalities fell into the single digits.

Yet the government has warned of a possible new wave of the virus that could arrive soon.

“A resurgence of cases in the summer might occur due to closed environments where indoor ventilation becomes difficult when air conditioning is operated,” Son Young-rae, senior epidemiological strategist at the Central Disaster Management Headquarters, told reporters on Monday.

“For this reason, medium-sized waves of infections have occurred over the past two years,” Son said.

The size of any new wave this summer, however, is likely to be “not very big,” he added.

With the spread of Covid-19 subsiding and most patients getting treated at home, Korea is closing down all residential treatment centers by the end of this month.

According to the health ministry on Monday, all 12 residential treatment centers run by the local governments will close this month. From June, only one center dedicated to foreigners coming in from abroad will continue operations.

A residential treatment center — or a Covid-19 quarantine facility for patients with mild cases — was first opened in the southern city of Daegu in March 2020 to help solve a shortage of hospital beds during the country’s first large outbreak of Covid-19.

Patients with moderate or serious symptoms were hospitalized in a dedicated infectious disease hospital, while asymptomatic and mild patients were sent to the residential treatment center. University dormitories were also used as centers, and medical staff were present.

Last October, the government adopted an at-home treatment system, making at-home care the default Covid-19 treatment except for groups at high-risk of hospitalization.

Residential treatment centers started accepting only elderly people without guardians and people living in residential environments vulnerable to virus infection.

But with the receding of the pandemic and grass-roots medical clinics providing face-to-face treatment, the operation rate of residential treatment centers continued to fall. As of 5 p.m. Sunday, only 75 out of 2,069 residential treatment beds were in use.

From June, health authorities will start a fast-track procedure that allows high-risk groups such as people aged 60 and older, immune-compromised patients and residents of nursing hospitals to receive tests, treatment, and prescriptions for Covid-19 within one day.

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