The nation’s new Covid-19 daily tally bounced back to nearly 100,000 on Tuesday, as BA.5 subvariant accounted for 56.3 percent of the total infections, local and imported.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) confirmed 99,327 new virus cases, raising the cumulative caseload to 19,346,764. Tuesday's count is more than double the previous day's 35,883 and the largest number since 111,291 reported on April 20.
The death toll came to 24,907, up 17 from the previous day, with a fatality rate of 0.13 percent. Critically ill patients also increased from 142 to 168.
The BA.5, an Omicron subvariant far more contagious and immunity-avoiding than earlier strains, continues to lead the resurgence in Korea recently. According to the authorities, the local detection rate of BA.5 in the second week of July was 49.1 percent, up 1.9 percentage points from the previous week's 47.2 percent.
When added to the high detection rate of 77.3 percent among foreign inflows, the overall detection rate of BA.5 surged to 56.3 percent.
Health officials consider a certain strain dominant if the detection rate exceeds 50 percent. If the current trend continues, BA.5 will likely become the dominant strain this week.
According to the agency, about 44.64 million among 52 million Koreans have been fully vaccinated. In addition, about 33.44 million people had received their first booster shots, and 5.19 million had their second booster shots.
Defining the current virus trend as "the first virus resurgence without uniform restrictions, such as private gathering limits and business curfews," KDCA Commissioner Peck Kyong-ran called on the public to take the initiative in complying with social distancing and other antivirus measures.
"What's important is that we continue our efforts to restore everyday life and overcome the resurgence crisis simultaneously," Peck said in a regular briefing.
Amid the mounting public criticism about the “scientific quarantine” – or lack thereof – under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration, a ruling party lawmaker maintained that if Korea wanted to enforce a scientific quarantine, President Yoon should appoint the KDCA commissioner as the commander of Korea's quarantine system. ,
At a National Assembly forum, Ahn, who served as the head of President Yoon's transition team and coined the phrase scientific quarantine, said, “Lately, I seem to hear a lot of questions about what 'scientific quarantine' is. To put it simply, scientific quarantine means health experts should make quarantine policies based on a scientific basis and not by bureaucrats or politicians based on politics."
While criticizing that the current government's quarantine policies are no different from the previous government, Ahn pointed out that the current quarantine response system needs to change.
Ahn pointed out that in the past government, there were situations where bureaucrats intervened in various areas of quarantine policy as the structure was difficult to reflect expert opinions.
"This is why the previous government's quarantine policy was called a political quarantine, not scientific quarantine," Ahn said. "While the Yoon administration established a National Infectious Disease Crisis Response Advisory Committee, this is also only a temporary measure."
KDCA Commissioner Peck Kyong-ran, an infectious disease specialist, is an expert on prevention and control and should be given full authority for the people to experience what scientific quarantine is, Ahn added.
During the forum, Ahn also argued that the system and methodology should change so the public can experience scientific quarantine.
According to Ahn, the government has tested all contacts of those who tested positive after identifying their movement and then quarantining them.
"However, during the current local infection stage, such methods have limitations," Ahn said. "Therefore, social distancing should be replaced with citizen participation-type quarantine."