Nearly 1.2 Million Under Home Treatment... Scale of Confirmed Voters on Presidential Election Day

Government Finds It Difficult to Predict Voting Participation of Confirmed Cases on Election Day
Confirmed and Isolated Voters to Vote Between 6 PM and 7:30 PM
Allowed to Go Out from 5:50 PM

[Asia Economy Reporter Ki Ha-young] With the 20th presidential election approaching on the 9th, attention is focused on the scale of voting by confirmed and quarantined individuals. While the government states that it is difficult to predict the exact number, the number of home treatment patients is approaching 1.2 million, and among them, hundreds of thousands of confirmed and quarantined individuals are expected to participate in the voting.

According to the Central Disease Control Headquarters as of midnight on the 8th, the number of home treatment patients was counted at 1,163,702. Considering that the age group under 18 recently accounts for about 25% of new confirmed cases, the number of voters aged 18 and over among home treatment patients is estimated to be approximately 870,000 to 880,000.

In addition to home treatment patients, patients hospitalized in hospitals, residents of living treatment centers, overseas arrival quarantined individuals, and quarantined persons due to close contact among members of infection-vulnerable facilities must also vote as COVID-19 confirmed cases. Considering these as well, the number of people who can participate in voting on the day of the presidential election is expected to exceed 900,000. However, since quite a few people have already participated in early voting, it is difficult to estimate how many of them will actually go to the polling stations.

Accordingly, the government also states that it is difficult to estimate the number of confirmed cases participating in voting on election day. Jeong Eun-kyung, Director of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, said the day before, "Although more than 200,000 confirmed cases occur daily recently, some people are also released from quarantine, so it is necessary to check the exact estimate for that date," adding, "Currently, about 1.2 million people are isolated for home treatment, and the number is increasing, so depending on the scale of confirmed cases and the number of people released from quarantine on the 7th and 8th, the number of people under home or quarantine treatment on election day may vary."

For a more accurate estimate, it is necessary to identify the scale of new confirmed cases on the 9th and the number of people released from quarantine between the 7th and 9th, and to exclude the number of people who participated in early voting on the 5th.

Earlier, the quarantine authorities predicted that more than 230,000 new confirmed cases would be reported on the 9th. However, this forecast was made before the removal of the quarantine pass and partial easing of social distancing, so the expected number of confirmed cases may increase further. In particular, the number of new confirmed cases during weekdays tends to surge around midweek. Due to a decrease in testing on weekends, the number slightly decreases in the early week and then surges around Wednesday. In fact, the number of new confirmed cases was 138,990 on the 1st and jumped about 1.58 times to 219,228 on the following day, the 2nd.

Confirmed and quarantined individuals on election day can vote from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM. Considering issues such as overlapping movement paths with non-confirmed general voters and the problem of confirmed patients who are ill waiting for a long time, the quarantine authorities have urged confirmed and quarantined individuals to go out for voting after 5:50 PM.

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