Korea expected to ease social distancing rules soon

Government says Omicron wave passes its peak; 'stealth Omicron' becomes dominant variant here

By Ko Dong-hwan

The government will probably ease social distancing measures again in the coming week, as it officially announced Monday that the wave of Omicron variant infections has passed its peak, with daily new COVID-19 infection cases gradually starting to subside.

During a Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) meeting, Health and Welfare Minister Kwon Deok-cheol said that the number of patients infected by Omicron has started to decrease 11 weeks after it became the country's dominant variant.

The current social distancing measures, capping the number of people at gatherings at eight and limiting the operating hours of multi-use facilities to 11 p.m., are scheduled to last until April 2. With the KDCA's latest announcement, it is expected that the next measure will raise the permissible size of gatherings and expand multi-use facilities' operating hours.

More concrete details concerning the next set of measures will be announced on April 1, after the agency continues monitoring for a few more days this week to see whether and how the downward trend of daily infection cases will persist.

The number of new daily infections for Sunday marked 187,213, falling below 200,000 for the first time in 25 days, since March 2. With Omicron's high transmissibility, combined with the easing of social distancing measures, the number of daily new infections had skyrocketed to unprecedented numbers. On Feb. 27, there were over 135,000 new infections per day, which then jumped to over 200,000 after a week and even soared to over 500,000 after another week. After reaching the all-time high of 621,281 daily new infections on March 16, the figure has gradually and unevenly started to fall, hitting 209,169 new cases on March 20, 490,881 on March 22 and 339,514 on March 24.

Yet the number of critically ill COVID-19 patients continues to increase steadily, a fact that raises questions over the safety of relaxing quarantine measures. The number of patients in serious condition on March 27 recorded an all-time high of 1,273, compared to 1,130 a week earlier. The figure hit the 1,000 mark on March 8 and has continued growing since.

The number of COVID-19-related deaths for Sunday stood at 287. The daily figures have remained between 200 and 400, even spiking to 469 on March 24.

Some 70 percent of the country's hospital beds reserved for critical COVID-19 patients were occupied as of Monday, according to the KDCA.

"The number of patients who fall critically ill or die usually peaks two to three weeks after the number of daily infections peaks, so we aren't in a totally safe zone yet," Kwon said.

Health and Welfare Minister Kwon Deok-cheol speaks during a Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) meeting at the Government Complex in Sejong, March 28. Yonhap
People line up to get tested for COVID-19 at a testing center in downtown Seoul's Tapgol Park, March 28. Yonhap

Experts were also still cautious despite the KDCA's latest announcement.

Chun Eun-mi, a professor of respiratory medicine at Ewha Womans University Mokdong Hospital, agreed with the KDCA's call that the Omicron wave has peaked. "It was the peak when the number of daily infection cases hit over 621,000 earlier this month (on March 16)," she told The Korea Times. "But the situation here produced a different kind of peak from that of other countries, where the numbers of daily new infections skyrocketed to peak at their highest points and then started decreasing fast. In Korea, the trend's slope is less steep and more gradual. That's why we've been seeing hundreds of thousands of patients for weeks."

One of the reasons the daily caseload has been falling recently might be due to the high number of people who are opting not to get tested, according to Chun. Compared to the numbers of COVID-19-related deaths in South Africa and Japan, for example, there were very few who tested themselves for infection, she said.

"In Korea, when people are ordered to quarantine themselves at home, they don't get any medical treatment at home. They are just ordered to stay still inside. Furthermore, when their symptoms are mild, or their livelihoods depend on going to work on a daily basis, or they aren't given enough time to rest, they simply don't bother getting tested for COVID-19. Considering this situation, it may be too early for the government to make the judgment that the number of COVID-19 patients will now start declining."

Chun agreed with Minister Kwon that the number of critical COVID-19 patients and deaths will start peaking in two to three weeks after the peak in the country's daily infection caseload. "Some of those who were infected during the March 16 peak will start becoming critically ill or dying from now on," Chun said. "I think the high death toll might persist for the next two weeks."

Minister Kwon said Monday that the country's dominant variant is no longer Omicron as of last week. He said that BA.2, an Omicron subvariant also known as "stealth Omicron," has been detected in 56.3 percent of the samples from those who tested positive for COVID-19 over the last week. The detection rate for BA.2 was 22.9 percent in the first week of March and it kept increasing each week to 26.3 percent, 41.4 percent and now 56.3 percent.

"The stealth Omicron subvariant is taking its toll on the world right now, with European nations especially showing major spikes in the numbers of daily infection cases there," Kwon said. "There seem to be people who are reluctant to get tested for COVID-19, so considering these blind spots, there could be more COVID-19 patients in our society than are visible via testing. That's one more reason we should still be vigilant about COVID-19."

Out of the 12 million total COVID-19 infections in the country so far, more than 10 million infections have been reported since last month.