Gyeonggi-do Must Change 'Isolation Release Criteria' to Resolve COVID Bed Shortage

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] Gyeonggi Province requested the government on the 17th to ease the criteria for releasing COVID-19 confirmed patients from isolation to address the shortage of hospital beds and accumulated fatigue among medical staff due to cluster outbreaks of COVID-19.

Lim Seung-kwan, co-head of Gyeonggi Province's COVID-19 Emergency Response Team, stated at a COVID-19 briefing that "With the steady increase in confirmed cases in the metropolitan area and the excessively long hospitalization period for confirmed patients, it is urgent to prepare efficient and reasonable alternatives," and made this request.

As of midnight on the 15th, a total of 737 confirmed patients in Gyeonggi Province were released from isolation.

The average duration of hospitalization until release from isolation in hospitals or residential treatment centers was analyzed to be 25.9 days, and 26.2 days excluding deceased patients.

Lim said, "Most patients have stayed in hospital beds for nearly four weeks without significant symptoms while recovering their health, and the physical exhaustion of medical staff is at a serious level," adding, "From a social perspective, a low turnover rate of hospital beds could lead to a crisis in the supply of medical resources such as intensive care unit beds."

The prolonged isolation period averaging 26 days is due to the Central Disease Control Headquarters' 'COVID-19 Response Guidelines' defining the release criteria based on 'testing.'

Patients are released from isolation only after clinical symptoms have recovered and they have tested negative twice consecutively at 24-hour intervals.

Regarding this, the Gyeonggi Province COVID-19 Expert Advisory Committee (co-chaired by Professor Kim Hong-bin of Bundang Seoul National University Hospital Infectious Diseases and Professor Jeong Hae-gwan of Sungkyunkwan University Preventive Medicine) explained that after in-depth discussion at the regular advisory meeting on the 12th, they concluded that adopting symptom-based release criteria rather than the current test-based strategy is more appropriate.

They suggested relaxing the requirement for two consecutive negative tests so that patients can be released from isolation after a certain period following symptom alleviation.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also evaluates that symptom-based release criteria are met if three days have passed since fever and respiratory symptoms improved and ten days have passed since the onset of the first symptoms, based on experiments. It was added that this is also the case for the World Health Organization (WHO), Europe, Singapore, and other countries.

Meanwhile, as of midnight on the 17th, the cumulative number of confirmed cases in the province was 1,064, an increase of 14 from midnight the previous day.

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