Daily Covid infections crash 100,000 barrier again

Social Affairs

Published: 27 Jul. 2022, 18:53

Daily Covid infections crash 100,000 barrier again

People in masks walk down the street in Myeong-dong, central Seoul, on Wednesday, as the government announced that more than 100,000 people tested positive for the coronavirus the day before. [YONHAP]

More than 100,000 people tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday, and health authorities urged businesses and the public to voluntarily practice social distancing.

Health authorities, however, stressed they weren’t considering a reinstatement of enforced social distancing measures as in the past, saying such restrictions wouldn’t prove effective at this point.

A total of 100,285 new coronavirus cases were detected nationwide Tuesday, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the first time since mid-April that the daily count reached six figures.

Tuesday’s figure was higher than Monday’s 99,327, and about 1.3 times higher than last Tuesday’s 76,379. Compared to two weeks before, it was about 2.5 times higher, and compared to four weeks before about 9.6 times.

The average number of confirmed cases over the past week was 73,000.

When including “hidden” Covid patients who caught the virus but haven’t gotten officially tested, some experts think there are currently 200,000 people fighting the virus in the country.

About half of all recent cases have been traced to the BA.5 variant, known to be more transmissible than previous variants.

Among Tuesday’s new cases, 532 were imported, the highest yet, as more people arrive in the country for travel purposes or to return home after overseas trips.

Gyeonggi topped the list for the most cases with 27,214, followed by Seoul with 20,083, South Gyeongsang with 5,480, Incheon with 5,314 and Busan with 5,289. Sejong was the only region where less than 1,000 people tested positive for the virus Tuesday.

Twenty-five Covid patients died, while 177 were in critical or serious condition.

While announcing the government’s new Covid-19 guidelines in a Wednesday briefing, Kim Seong-ho, an official with the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, said the government was inclined to overcome the current crisis purely through “public [voluntary] participation.”

In tandem with the new guidelines, the Ministry of Personnel Management said it would strengthen Covid-19 protection measures in the public sector until the end of August “to set an example” for the rest of the country.

Under the ministry’s recommendations, business meetings and events in government offices are recommended to be held remotely, while after-work social gatherings among team members are recommended to be scrapped.

Other recommendations include working from home, going to and getting off work in different time slots, and taking rapid antigen tests upon returning from summer vacations.

The Ministry of Education advised hagwon (private academies) to refrain from holding in-person classes and any activities involving physical contact.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said it will dispatch officials to performance halls, theaters, noraebang (singing rooms), PC bang (internet cafes) and stadiums to check whether visitors are keeping masks on indoors – a Covid restriction that has yet to be officially lifted.

With more than 300,000 people expected to come down with the virus in coming weeks, health authorities said they plan to arrange nearly 4,000 more hospital beds to be exclusively used to treat Covid-19 patients, and designate more medical institutes where patients can be tested and treated without transferring to another institute.

In explaining why the government wasn’t forcing the public to socially distance, Peck Kyong-ran, commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), said in a Tuesday briefing that the government “has assessed that in the current phase of the pandemic, it’s ineffective to implement uniform restrictions [on the public] such as limiting the number of people that can gather for social gatherings, or limiting the time” that shops and restaurants can stay open.

“We need sustainable preventive policies in order to continue our return to normalcy,” said Peck, “and for that to happen, we need the public to proactively practice [preventive measures on their own], using the wisdom they have obtained throughout the past two and a half years.”

But Kim Woo-joo, a professor of infectious diseases at Korea University Guro Hospital, said the government should at least ban summer social gatherings that were prone to become virus breeding grounds, such as pool parties and so-called water festivals.

“The reason why it’s difficult to reintroduce government-led social distancing measures is not that they aren’t effective,” said Kim. “It’s because the social and economic damages are huge.”

The professor also urged health authorities to open more Covid-19 testing sites offering free tests, arguing that many people seem to be bypassing PCR tests because free testing sites have long waiting lines or are located far away.

BY LEE SUNG-EUN [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]