Emergency rooms (ERs) in Korean hospitals are already busy taking care of Covid-19 patients, fever patients, and general patients requiring urgent care, but they now have to provide care for drunkards.

Local governments are increasingly installing “a drunkard emergency medical center,” which protects drunken people in beds within an ER until they get sober.

North Gyeongsang Province announced on Tuesday that it began to operate an emergency medical center for drunken people in the ER of Pohang Medical Center. At the center, the intoxicated are protected in dedicated beds in the ER. In addition, North Gyeongsang Province’s Autonomous Police Committee will dispatch four officers to the emergency medical center for drunk people 24 hours a day.

According to the National Police Agency in North Gyeongsang Province, the police received 17,318 reports of drunkards between January and July, an increase of about 1,600 from the same period last year.

In response, the province opened the emergency medical center for drunkards and expected that it would prevent a “public security gap” and provide systematic and professional medical support for them.

Depending on the performance of the emergency medical center, the system might be expanded across the North Gyeongsang Province.

Emergency care centers for drunkards are also available at Seosan Medical Center in South Chungcheong Province, Hanyang University Guri Hospital in Gyeonggi Province, and Central Hospital in Ulsan, led by the National Police Agency.

There, police officers protect drunken people until they become sober.

South Chungcheong Province plans to install another care center for drunken people at Cheonan Medical Center.

However, emergency care physicians criticized the move, calling it a typical window-dressing policy.

“Korea is the only country that forces ERs to take care of drunkards,” an emergency medicine doctor said. “Some Covid-19 patients even die in an ambulance because they can’t get a bed in ER. In this situation, hospitals are forced to protect drunken people.”

Lee Hyung-min, president of the Korean Emergency Medical Association, who works at the Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital, said existing emergency medical centers for drunkards received poor evaluations and that the project was “meaningless.”

“Many problems occur because of drunken people, and all they do is push them inside the hospital,” he said.

Lee said protecting drunkards is the last thing hospitals should do in the Covid-19 pandemic situation, but state-run medical institutions were doing it in their ERs.

“Is controlling drunkards a part of public healthcare,” he asked. “They should stop this window-dressing policy.”