The government on Friday made an official judgment that Covid-19 has shifted to an expansionary phase, alerting the public against the renewed pandemic.
It was the de facto confirmation of the pandemic’s resurge in the country, and the quarantine authorities plan to announce countermeasures, including the reinstatement of social distancing measures, next Wednesday.
"Evidence points to the fact that the country is facing another wave of Covid-19 infections," Second Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Lee Ki-il said at a daily Covid-19 meeting. "As the Covid-19 has turned into a spreading phase again, it is time for all of us to be alert once again toward the spread of the virus."
Lee stressed that the height of another wave, the sixth one in Korea, will vary depending on the government's and the public's efforts. "The nation has wisely overcome numerous obstacles in anti-Covid-19 combat in the past," Lee said. "We hope the people will protect themselves, your families, and neighbors through personal quarantine, such as wearing masks indoors and doing periodic ventilation."
"We are reviewing changing the quarantine measures by judging the overall trend of the predictive model and how many severe cases and fatalities we might face in the process," Son Young-rae, a senior health ministry official, said. "We will announce whether there is a need to change various quarantine measures, including social distancing, and if so, to what extent, next Wednesday."
The daily tally in Korea has stayed above 18,000 for the fourth straight day Friday.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 19,323 new virus cases, including 191 cases from overseas, pushing the cumulative caseload to 18,471,172. The daily tally compared with 9,522 on Friday last week.
The nation also reported 12 more Covid-19 deaths, raising the death toll to 24,605. The fatality rate stood at 0.13 percent. In addition, the number of critically ill patients came to 62, up six from the previous day, the KDCA said.
The pace of the virus' reproduction has recently gone up, largely due to the nation's increased mobility in summer holidays, waning immunity, rising indoor infections, and the emerging subvariants.
Authorities said the spreading BA.5, a subvariant of the Covid-19 omicron variant, is most contagious of all mutations and allegedly resistant to the immunity from previous Covid-19 infections.
private experts predicted that if the BA.5 subvariant becomes a dominant strain this summer or fall, the nation’s daily Covid-19 tally could exceed 100,000, adding that the new subvariant might not be more severe than the Omicron variant sharply increase new infections and hospitalization, leading to far more Covid-19 deaths.
To prevent the further spread of the virus, quarantine officials checked the quarantine status of facilities vulnerable to infection, such as correctional facilities and slaughterhouses, which have served as major infection points in the past.
The government also intensively checked the status of hospital beds with local governments across the country.
As of Friday, 44.63 million, or 87 percent of the population, had completed the full two-dose vaccinations, and 33.38 million, or 65 percent, had received their first booster shots.
About 4.49 million people, or 8.7 percent of the population, had gotten their second booster shots, according to the KDCA.