COVID-19 Patient Treatment Institutions, Government to Compensate Losses... "Assessing the Scale" (Update)

Kim Kang-rip, Deputy Head of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters [Photo by Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heung-soon] The government is identifying the specific scale of losses to compensate medical institutions treating COVID-19 patients. It also plans to support the expansion of infrastructure to detect and treat infectious disease patients early.

According to the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters on the 13th, the government is assessing the scale of loss compensation for medical institutions treating COVID-19 patients to prevent and control infectious diseases. In addition, a Loss Compensation Deliberation Committee, mainly composed of medical-related organizations and associations, is being formed to establish specific compensation standards. Members recommended by the Korean Medical Association, the Korean Hospital Association, and the Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service will be appointed in the fourth week of this month to form the committee.

To proactively prepare for the community spread of COVID-19, the government is managing the usage rate of nationally designated inpatient treatment beds (currently 28%) stably and is reviewing operational plans by local governments to prepare for situations requiring additional beds. The epidemiological investigation rapid response teams will also be expanded from the current 10 teams to 30 teams. To this end, discussions are underway to form a personnel pool including 40 administrative support staff from related agencies and 30 public health doctors from local governments. The government is also expanding the professional term system for epidemiologists and promoting recruitment in the first half of the year.

The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters expanded the number of diagnostic reagent production facilities from one company to two companies starting from the 12th. Diagnostic and testing institutions have also been expanded to include 46 private institutions in addition to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency and public health environment research institutes. As a result, the number of diagnostic tests increased from only 142 on the 6th to 1,262 on the 11th.

Kim Kang-rip, Deputy Head of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, said, "Currently, we can conduct tests for about 5,000 people per day, but we plan to increase the testing capacity to 10,000 people per day by the end of February."

Additionally, to block the risk of infection transmission within medical institutions, the government has allocated a budget of 18.8 billion KRW to local governments for expanding mobile X-ray equipment at screening clinics and has requested a supplementary budget of 23.3 billion KRW to support air tents, mobile negative pressure devices, and other equipment.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.