615 New COVID-19 Cases... Over 600 for Two Consecutive Days (Update)

Current Domestic Status as of 0:00 on the 7th by Central Disease Control Headquarters
Weekend Testing Decreased but Exceeded 600 for Two Consecutive Days
Over 70% in the Capital Area... Positivity Rate 4.2%, Twice the Usual Rate

On the 7th, a day before the government’s implementation of raising social distancing to level 2.5 in the Seoul metropolitan area, commuters are passing by a social distancing promotional poster posted at Sindorim Station in Seoul. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Dae-yeol] On the 7th, the newly confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) were counted at 615. For two consecutive days, the number exceeded 600 following the previous day.

According to the domestic occurrence status compiled by the Central Disease Control Headquarters as of 0:00 on the day, 580 cases are estimated to be domestic infections, and 35 cases are imported from overseas. New patients in the metropolitan area including Seoul accounted for more than 70% of the total with 440 cases. Except for Sejong and Jeju, new cases were reported in all local governments. In non-metropolitan areas, double-digit new cases were recorded in Busan, Chungbuk, Chungnam, Jeonbuk, and Gyeongnam, including Ulsan, where a cluster infection occurred in nursing facilities.

Usually, the number of new confirmed cases tends to decrease over the weekend as diagnostic testing decreases, but this time it is somewhat different. Recently, diagnostic tests for suspected patients during weekdays have been around 25,000 per day, while about 13,000 tests are conducted on weekends.

Despite conducting over 10,000 fewer tests, the fact that new confirmed cases are higher means that the number of hidden patients in various parts of the community has increased. The positivity rate, the ratio of confirmed cases to the number of tests on the day, was 4.2%, exceeding 4% for two consecutive days following the previous day’s 4.4%. This means that out of about 100 tests, more than 4 people are confirmed positive. Until early last week, the rate was around 1-2%, so it has more than doubled.

The number of patients in isolation increased by 438 from the previous day to 8,311, reaching the highest level ever recorded. This is nearly 1,000 more than the mid-March period during the first wave when isolation cases were at their peak. The number of critically ill patients increased by 1 to 126. Four people died yesterday, raising the total number of deaths in the country to 549.

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