The government said Thursday that it is preparing new nationwide social distancing measures, considering the newly dominant Omicron variant.
“Most countries are struggling to cope with the resurge of new virus cases due to the Omicron variant,” Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Ryu Keun-hyuck said in a joint briefing. “We are also preparing and implementing various quarantine policies to prevent and block Omicron’s spread.”
However, it has become quite difficult to predict the end of a pandemic as new variants like Omicron converge with the existing Delta variant, Vice Minister Ryu acknowledged, For now, the government will step up existing measures, such as securing more sickbeds, maintaining distance between people, and giving vaccines, as it has done so far.”
"We need to consider the new variable of Omicron in preparing social distancing measures," said Lee Ki-il, assistant minister for healthcare policy at the ministry, recalling that it experienced similar difficulties when the Delta variant first appeared.
Lee noted that the nation entered into the first stage of the “living with Covid-19” system to return to normal daily life on Nov. 1 but had to suspend it temporarily due to the infection spike.
“Now that the new variant appeared that is three times more contagious but somewhat milder than the existing virus, we need a new plan to deal with the Omicron variant,” Lee went on to say, adding that the government is working out new distancing measures as the existing scheme does not take Omicron into account.
Quarantine officials also cautioned against premature complacency, saying it is difficult to remain optimistic. They cited the examples of some countries where officials and experts hoped that the Omicron variant could be an occasion for the pandemic to be weakened to an endemic level based on the low severity.
"We don’t have data on how far the virus has spread among older adults and driven them to be hospitalized, but there are reports that Omicron variant significantly increased children’s hospitalization," said Jung Tong-ryung, head of pandemic response coordination team at the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). “It is a little too early for us to conclude whether the Covid-19 will become endemic soon as there are various factors, such as how effective and long the vaccine would work against the virus."
The government has vaccinated 44,168,856 people – 11,153,688 with the AstraZeneca vaccine, 24,726,737 with Pfizer's vaccine, 1,509,575 with Janssen's vaccine, 6,778,856 with Moderna's vaccine – with the first shot of the vaccine up 48,807 from the previous day. In addition, it has provided more than 17.1 million booster shots to older adults and other vulnerable groups.
About 82.7 percent of Koreans were fully vaccinated, 86 percent had received their first shots, and 33.4 percent had received booster shots.
A 16-year-old boy died after taking the Covid-19 vaccine. It was the youngest reported death after vaccination against the virus.
The case was reported to KDCA when the teenager died after receiving the second Covid-19 shot, but the causality between the vaccine has not been determined yet. Health authorities plan to investigate the case and find whether the vaccine has caused the death or not.
On Thursday, the nation confirmed 5,037 new virus cases, including 4,930 local infections, raising the cumulative caseload to 625,967. An additional 73 people died of Covid-19, lifting the death toll to 5,455, with a fatality rate of 0.87 percent.
The country also reported 67 new omicron variant cases, bringing the total to 625. Among them, 293 omicron variant cases were imported and 332 locally transmitted.
The KDCA said Korea began using its newly developed polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests on Thursday.
The new PCR test, co-developed by the private sector in Korea, reduces the time detecting the omicron variant to three to four hours from three to five days.
Until now, the health authorities used a PCR test to distinguish between four variants -- Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta -- and conducted additional genome analysis to determine whether the case involved omicron.
The new PCR test is the first in the world that can detect all five main variants. According to the public health authorities, it also demonstrated 100 percent accuracy for both negative and positive tests.
The KDCA said the number of patients confirmed with the omicron variant could increase with the rise in testing volumes of the new PCR test.
On Dec. 18, the government reinstated a set of revised virus restrictions across the country, which will remain until Jan. 2 to stem the spread of the virus. It reversed the "living with Covid-19" scheme that began last month, intending to return to normalcy by relaxing virus restrictions in phased steps.
Under the new measures, the maximum size of private gatherings is limited to four people nationwide, from the previous limit of six in the Seoul metro region and eight elsewhere. A 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. curfew is applied to businesses as well, depending on their type of service.