Covid cases soar to four-month high
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"As the need of treatment for high-risk Covid patients including pregnant women, newborn babies and people with severe underlying conditions is high, we decided to operate weekend on-call hospitals in the Seoul Metropolitan area."
"The sixth wave will continue until late August," said Lee Sang-won, head of the epidemiological investigations team at the Headquarters, "and the size will be between 110,000 to 200,000 daily new infections, before slowly dying out."
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New Covid-19 cases soared to a four-month high of over 180,000 following the three-day holiday weekend.
The country added 180,803 new Covid-19 infections on Wednesday, including 567 cases from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 21,682,816, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
That daily figure was 2.1 times the count from the day before, as more people got tested after the extended weekend, which included Liberation Day on Monday.
The figure was the largest in about four months since April 13’s 195,387 cases.
The average number of new daily cases in the week from Aug. 11 to Wednesday came to 119,576.
Critically ill Covid-19 patients came down by 94 from the previous day's number to 469 as of Tuesday midnight.
"There were many critically ill patients whose symptoms improved or were released from the hospital during the holiday,” the KDCA said.
Yet an increase in critical cases is still clear compared to 402 patients reported a week ago or 71 patients a month ago.
The occupancy rate of intensive care beds for Covid-19 patients nationwide stood at 43.7 percent, inching down by 1.8 percentage points from the previous day.
Forty-two more people died of the virus overnight, including a child under the age of 10. The death toll was raised to 25,752.
Following delays in bed assignments for high-risk groups on weekends and holidays, the government decided to make hospitals with Covid-19 ICU beds operate on weekends. This will include three out of 18 hospitals treating Covid-19 patients in the greater Seoul area, which will operate on weekends starting this Saturday for six weeks.
“After monitoring the hospital bed management system, we found many cases that required prompt hospitalization on weekends,” said Park Hyang, director of antivirus measures at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, during Wednesday’s press briefing.
“As the need of treatment for high-risk Covid patients including pregnant women, newborn babies and people with severe underlying conditions is high, we decided to operate weekend on-call hospitals in the Seoul Metropolitan area,” Park said.
The government projects the current sixth Covid-19 wave to peak at around 200,000 daily cases and subside gradually.
“The sixth wave will continue until late August,” said Lee Sang-won, head of the epidemiological investigations team at the Headquarters, “and the size will be between 110,000 to 200,000 daily new infections, before slowly dying out.”
Officials said critical cases will reach 800 to 900 at the most around early September, and daily fatalities will peak at 100 to 140 at the maximum.
Despite the jump in new infections, medical experts said the latest upsurge remains manageable.
"The death toll is much lower than in countries abroad compared to the number of confirmed cases," said Jung Ki-suck, head of the National Infectious Diseases Consulting Committee.
"We have to choose whether to reduce the number of patients while having our daily lives limited, or to have more freedom and accept the [high] number of new infections," Jung said.
BY SEO JI-EUN [seo.jieun1@joongang.co.kr]
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