The government said it would reinvestigate the proportion of Korean people who have antibodies against Covid-19, amid experts’ warning that daily cases could exceed 200,000 this winter.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) announced on Thursday that it would conduct the second and third investigations into the nation’s Covid-19 antibody-positive rate.
Earlier in September, the quarantine authorities said more than 97 percent of Koreans had Covid-19 antibodies, citing the result of the first report on the antibody-positive rate.
The second investigation will be a tracing test on 9,901 people who participated in the first one to find out how many of them lost immunity over time.
The third research will recruit new participants.
The second research result will come out in late November or early December, and the third result, in January or February next year, the KDCA said.
Meanwhile, the health authorities said Korea was officially in its seventh wave of the pandemic and maintained the seven-day quarantine for confirmed Covid-19 patients and indoor mask mandates.
According to the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters, the number of newly confirmed Covid-19 patients in the first week of November increased by 27.5 percent, compared to the previous week. The number of critically ill patients went up by 43 to 281, and the deaths rose by 65 to 225, during the same period.
R0, or an estimated reproductive rate of how many people may contract the virus from one infected person, stood at 1.21, climbing for four weeks consecutively.
CDSCH expected the Covid-19 wave to peak after December and daily cases could be as many as 200,000.
On Wednesday, Korea added 55,365 new Covid-19 infections, including 50 cases from abroad, bringing the total caseload to 26,037,020, according to the KDCA.
The nation also reported 52 more Covid-19 deaths, raising the death toll to 29,531. The fatality rate stood at 0.11 percent. The number of critically ill patients came to 323, down 13 from the previous day.