New Cases 440,000→400,000 'Confusion'... Government "System Omission, Improvement Completed" (Comprehensive)

Recognition of Positive Cases by Professional Rapid Antigen Tests from the 14th
Increased Confirmed Case Reports from Medical Institutions, Some Cases Missing Due to Unclear Addresses
Missing Confirmed Cases to Be Reflected from Midnight on the 17th

[Asia Economy Reporter Ki Ha-young] As the daily number of new confirmed cases exceeded 400,000 due to the spread of Omicron, confusion arose when the number of new confirmed cases announced by the quarantine authorities at midnight on the 16th was more than 40,000 less than the provisional figures independently tallied by each city and province the previous night. In response, the quarantine authorities explained that the issue occurred due to some confirmed cases being omitted because of a system error, and that they urgently improved the system on the same day.

Ko Jae-young, spokesperson for the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), said in a non-face-to-face back briefing that day, "Typically, the KDCA aggregates confirmed case information reported from 17 local governments through the system and organizes it to check for duplicates or errors." He added, "Afterward, when local governments submit the list of confirmed cases as of midnight to the KDCA, the list submitted by the local governments and the list aggregated by the system are verified, and confirmed cases are counted based on midnight." When the local government’s list and the KDCA system’s list match, the cases are classified as confirmed and assigned a case number.

Spokesperson Ko explained, "A problem occurred during the process of transferring confirmed case information from the system after the verification of the confirmed case list." He said, "Because the medical institution addresses within the system were unclear, the relevant public health centers could not assign confirmed cases, and the confirmed cases reported from such medical institutions were omitted in the final tally."

He added that the reason for the unclear medical institution addresses was "due to the increase in reports from medical institutions following the implementation of expert rapid antigen tests, and also because the number of users increased."

However, the omitted confirmed cases are expected to be included in the statistics as of midnight on the 17th. Jung Woo-jin, head of the Quarantine System Operation Team, said, "The issue of missing medical institution addresses was urgently fixed in the system during lunchtime today," and added, "Measures have been completed to ensure that the same problem does not occur in the statistics at midnight tomorrow."

The Central Disease Control Headquarters announced that the number of new COVID-19 confirmed cases as of midnight on the 16th was 400,741. This figure is more than 40,000 less than the 441,423 new confirmed cases tallied from midnight to 9 p.m. the previous day across 17 cities and provinces nationwide. Considering the increase until midnight, when the initial tally was to be finalized, the final number of confirmed cases was expected to surge to the mid-400,000s.

Earlier, the KDCA also stated in the morning regarding the statistical error in the number of confirmed cases, "The confirmed case count reported the previous evening was based on disaster text messages and press releases from local governments," and added, "This count did not remove existing confirmed cases, duplicates from other cities or provinces, or errors, so the number decreases after information verification during the late night."

Son Young-rae, head of the Social Strategy Division at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, also said in a morning briefing, "Since positive rapid antigen tests are recognized as confirmed cases, a considerable number of reports have been received," and added, "It takes time for such cases to be aggregated in the system, and some cases were not captured in the statistics after a certain point, but these will be reflected in today’s (tomorrow’s announcement) statistics."

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