Despite Korea's new Covid-19 cases falling below 25,000 approximately half of the previous day (47,028), government officials remain alert over the virus's possible resurgence during the winter.
On Monday, Korea reported 22,327 new Covid-19 infections, including 53 cases from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 26,959,843, according to data from the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
The nation also added 44 deaths from Covid-19, raising the death toll to 30,413 and critically ill patients rose to 491, up by 10 from the previous day.
However, authorities have noted that the lower number of cases are likely due to the reduced diagnostic testing capacity over the weekend as a similar trend was also noted in the previous weeks on Nov. 14 and Nov. 21 with 23,748 and 23,077 cases respectively.
On Tuesday last week, however, daily cases rose again to 72,860 from which it steadily declined to 47,028 on Sunday.
According to the KDCA, about 44.69 million among 52 million Koreans have been fully vaccinated. In addition, about 33.70 million people had received their first booster shots, and 7.59 million had their second booster shots.
Meanwhile, the National Advisory Committee on Infectious Disease Crisis Response proposed 10 indicators for analyzing the socio-economic impact of Covid-19 epidemic and related quarantine policies as a tool for developing better crisis response strategies.
As a result, they found that social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic reduced consumption spending, and cultural and leisure-related industries. Small business owners suffered the most. The transition from the pandemic to an epidemic also led to an increase in unemployment and a higher number of patients with depression.
Additionally, the ratio of unemployed men and women were similar before the epidemic but women were more disproportionately affected than men after the epidemic.
"Infectious disease very often have severe socio-economic impacts beyond the initial health crisis," Hong Seok-chul, member of the National Advisory Committee explained. "By establishing social and economic monitoring, we can quickly identify vulnerable groups who stand to suffer the most and use this tool to efficiently support them.”