Thu 17 March 2022:
On Thursday, South Korea recorded a new high of over 600,000 coronavirus cases, with officials claiming the country was nearing the apex of an Omicron-fueled infection wave.
South Korea leads the world in newly reported cases in the last seven days, with 2,417,174 infections, followed by Vietnam with 1,776,045 infections, according to WHO data.
The 621,328 cases reported on Thursday are the largest daily total since the pandemic began in South Korea.
But critical cases and deaths remain comparatively low in the country of around 52 million where the majority of adults are fully vaccinated and have received a booster shot, official data shows.
“We have been preparing for an increase in the number of patients since Omicron became dominant,” Lee Sang-won, a senior official at the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said Thursday.
But even the government’s modelling did not anticipate this many, he said.
“The number is much greater than what was expected,” he said.
Although health officials believe South Korea is nearing the height of an Omicron-driven wave, Lee said they were recalculating “the scale of the confirmed cases or how long the ‘peak period’ is going to last”.
Officials anticipate that once it passes, the country will be able to resume normalcy.
According to health officials in South Korea, 11,481 people have died of Covid since the pandemic began in 2020.
According to official figures, the total Covid death rate was 0.14 percent as of Thursday, compared to 0.05 to 0.1 percent for seasonal flu.
Under pressure from small company owners who claim that years of Covid restrictions had driven them to the brink, the country has continued to soften its social distancing regulations.
This Friday, the government is scheduled to decide whether to maintain current distance guidelines, such as a commercial curfew of 11 p.m.
Seoul will begin vaccinating children between the ages of 5 and 11 later this month.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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