Korea's new virus cases fell below 140,000 on Friday, but daily Covid-19 deaths reached the highest figure in more than three months amid the lingering resurgence driven by a highly contagious Omicron subvariant, BA.5.
The country added 138,812 new Covid-19 infections, including 465 cases from abroad, bringing the total caseload to 22,000,037, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). It marked a decline from Thursday's 178,574 but was still about 10 percent larger than a week earlier.
Korea reported 83 Covid-19 deaths, the highest level since April 29, when 136 deaths were tallied. The cumulative death toll came to 25,896 amid the fatality rate of 0.12 percent, the KDCA said. "The number of Covid-19 deaths is likely to keep rising. The quarantine authorities will strive further to protect high-risk groups," said Sohn Young-rae, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
Officials predicted that the daily death toll could rise to 140 later this month or early next month when the ongoing resurge reaches its peak.
The number of critically ill patients came to 492, up from 472 a day earlier.
The government has designated 10,000 one-stop Covid-19 treatment centers across the country, where people can take virus tests and get in-person medical care services and antiviral drugs.
It also secured 630,000 oral Covid-19 treatments and 2,148 pharmacies prescribing them.
The government explained that it would continue to expand pharmacies prescribing oral Covid-19 treatments near one-stop medical institutions.
According to the agency, about 44.66 million among 52 million Koreans have been fully vaccinated. In addition, about 33.52 million people had received their first booster shots, and 6.76 million had their second booster shots.
Meanwhile, a top quarantine official urged experts not to publish mathematical modeling analysis on predicting the Covid-19 pandemic spread, as it “consumes too much of its quarantine response capacity” when the predictions prove inaccurate.
"Please look at the statistic models predicting the spread of the Covid-19 virus as a reference," said Jung Ki-suck, head of the National Infectious Diseases Consulting Committee, during a daily task force meeting. "Previous studies have shown that it is difficult to say that the mid- to long-term forecast of more than four weeks is accurate."
Jung compared the long-term Covid-19 spread predictions to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) forecast.
"Even though the KMA has supercomputers to predict the weather, it often fails to predict the weather accurately," Jung said. "However, some media outlets and individuals tend to read too much into the Covid-19 spread predictions and ask for an explanation when the predictions are correct or wrong."
However, Jung acknowledged the need for a Covid-19 spread prediction through mathematical modeling to resolve questions and set policy directions.
"Therefore, the KDCA will head such studies to prevent the confusion of studies emerging from various research teams," Jung said.
At the meeting, Jung also emphasized the need for intensive management of vulnerable high-risk groups, saying that eradicating Covid-19 is impossible.
"As you all know, eradicating the Covid-19 virus is no longer possible," he said. "Therefore, Intensive management of high-risk groups, more active support and management of high-risk facilities and establishment of systems is necessary."
The most desirable policy direction is to provide special and targeted management of high-risk facilities while maintaining the number of patients to a level the society can tolerate, he added.