Authorities "Up to 170,000 Cases by the End of This Month"... Enduring with a Selective and Focused Home Medical Care System

On the 7th, with 35,286 new COVID-19 cases reported, marking the third consecutive day of over 30,000 cases, citizens are lined up waiting for tests at the screening clinic of Songpa-gu Public Health Center in Seoul. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

[Asia Economy Reporter Chunhee Lee] The quarantine authorities have projected that the number of new COVID-19 cases could approach 170,000 by the end of this month.

Jung Eun-kyung, head of the Central Disease Control Headquarters (CDCH) and Commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), stated at a regular briefing on the morning of the 7th, "According to COVID-19 outbreak predictions by the KDCA and various domestic and international experts, due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant, the number of confirmed cases in the country could reach between 130,000 and 170,000 by the end of February."

Lee Sang-won, KDCA Crisis Response Analyst, explained, "This is the result of modeling that comprehensively considers the speed of the outbreak, transmission potential, infection probability, and vaccination effectiveness," adding, "It means that most researchers agree on the possibility of more than 130,000 cases."

The expected spread is steeper and higher than previously anticipated by the authorities. On the 21st of last month, the CDCH predicted that even assuming Omicron’s transmission rate is three times that of Delta, the number of daily confirmed cases by the end of this month would be between 79,500 and 122,200. The minimum estimate announced by the authorities on this day (130,000) already exceeds the highest previous prediction.

This rapid spread appears to be due to the Omicron variant rapidly expanding its presence. The domestic detection rate of the Omicron variant has sharply increased over the past three weeks from 50.3% to 80.0% and then to 92.1%.

The daily new confirmed cases surpassed 10,000 for the first time on the 26th of last month (13,008 cases), then exceeded 20,000 just a week later on the 2nd (20,268 cases). The 30,000 mark was crossed on the 5th (36,346 cases), only three days later, and since then, daily cases have remained in the 30,000 range for three consecutive days.

The quarantine authorities maintain that even with such a rapid spread, the current level of medical response is sufficient to manage the situation. Son Young-rae, head of the Social Strategy Division at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters, explained, "On average, about 100,000 confirmed cases per day are expected to occur for more than 20 days," adding, "If the home treatment system is smoothly reorganized to focus on high-risk groups through selective and concentrated measures, it is judged that this level of confirmed cases can be adequately managed."

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