Amid the signs of a resurgent Covid-19 pandemic, the government has begun to prepare for lowing it from a level-2 to a level-4 infectious disease. However, the government will carefully determine the timing of the transition after consulting with experts.
"We will continue to manage the quarantine situation stably while steadily implementing preparations for the transition of Covid-19 to a level 4 infectious disease," Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) Commissioner Jee Young-mee said Wednesday while chairing a meeting of the Central Disaster Management Headquarters.
Regarding the timing of the level 4 transition, the KDCA plans to carefully consider comprehensive conditions, including the domestic and international epidemic and epidemic prevention situation, and make a decision after consulting with experts, Jee added.
The government will implement a two-stage plan to downgrade Covid-19's infectious disease status from level 2 to level 4 under the Covid-19 Crisis Stage Adjustment Roadmap. In the second stage, quarantine measures, including the mask mandate, will ease further, and its treatment will be completely shifted to the general medical system.
On March 24, the KDCA issued the administrative notice concerning the adjustment of Covid-19 to a level 4 infectious disease and will finalize it after collecting opinions until Thursday.
On Tuesday, it also promulgated the revised Act on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases (Infectious Disease Control Act), a basis for downgrading the Covid-19 infectious disease classification.
KDCA will announce the mitigated quarantine measures to be introduced when the disease is downgraded to a level 4 infectious disease next week.
"Major countries, including the U.S., Japan, and Europe, switched from full surveillance to sample surveillance and stopped counting new cases in the first half of the year," Jee said. "Japan and the U.S. are also experiencing summer spread due to decreased immunity and increased indoor life, but they are responding to it within the general medical system."
Ji said that whether to lift the mask mandate for hospital-level medical institutions and susceptible facilities when the epidemic transitions to level 4 will be reviewed with the protection of high-risk groups in mind and announced next week.
According to the headquarters, the number of confirmed cases began to rise after the fourth week of June, with the average daily number of cases last week reaching 45,000. The current daily outbreak is about 35 percent of last year's summer peak and 60 percent of the winter peak.
The weekly fatality rate is 0.02 percent, and the severity rate is 0.09 percent, about 30 percent of the fatality rate during the previous epidemic amid sharply lowered disease risk.
KDCA assesses that the XBB variants circulating in Korea are Omicron’s subtypes and do not pose a higher risk of clinical symptoms or disease than existing variants.
"For healthy people, Covid-19 poses an influenza-like risk, but protection is still needed for the elderly and immunocompromised," Jee said. "It is not a full-blown endemic, and we expect to see small and large outbreaks once or twice a year for the foreseeable future."
To respond to the increase in Covid-19 during the summer months, KDCA will use six response principles to protect high-risk groups and encourage them to follow personal protection practices, Ji added.
The six response principles are establishing daily quarantine practices, such as wearing indoor masks, closely managing Covid-19 outbreaks in vulnerable facilities, securing Covid-19 beds, preventing high-risk groups from becoming severely ill, stabilizing the diagnosis and testing system, and quickly introducing XBB-based vaccines in preparation for winter.