"Daily COVID-19 Cases Below 40,000 in May... Decline Stops and Plateau Expected" (Update)

National COVID Risk Level Lowered to 'Medium'

On the 18th, the first day of the full lifting of COVID-19 social distancing measures, Nogari Alley in Euljiro, Jung-gu, Seoul, was bustling with citizens.
Photo by Moon Honam munonam@

[Asia Economy Reporter Jo In-kyung] As the Omicron variant shows a clear declining trend, health authorities downgraded the nationwide COVID-19 risk level from 'High' to 'Moderate' last week (April 17?23). Although the daily new COVID-19 cases continue to decrease and are expected to stay below 40,000 per day next month, some predictions suggest the numbers may plateau afterward.

The Central Disease Control Headquarters announced on the 26th that due to a continuous decrease in weekly new COVID-19 cases over the past five weeks since the third week of March (March 13?19), the COVID-19 risk level, which was 'High' in the previous week (April 10?16), has been lowered to 'Moderate.'

By region, the risk level in the metropolitan area, which had maintained 'High' for two consecutive weeks starting from the first week of this month (April 3?9), dropped to 'Moderate' last week, while the risk level in non-metropolitan areas remained at 'High' for the second consecutive week. The health authorities assess COVID-19 infection risk using 18 evaluation indicators, including ICU bed occupancy rate, weekly severe case numbers, and the proportion of confirmed cases aged 60 and above, categorizing the risk into five levels: very low, low, moderate, high, and very high.

The Central Disease Control Headquarters explained, "Although incidence indicators are generally declining, the decision was made considering that the number of deaths last week still exceeded 1,000 and the ICU bed occupancy rate situation in non-metropolitan areas."

Last week's weekly confirmed cases decreased by about 40% compared to the previous week, totaling 617,852 cases, with a daily average of 88,265 cases. The effective reproduction number was 0.70, maintaining below 1 for four consecutive weeks. The effective reproduction number quantifies how many people one infected person transmits the virus to; a value above 1 indicates 'epidemic spread,' while below 1 indicates 'epidemic suppression.'

The Central Disease Control Headquarters also summarized predictions made by domestic and international researchers on the 20th, forecasting that daily confirmed cases will drop below 40,000 in May. The number of ICU patients is expected to decrease to below 500 after two weeks.

However, they note that due to various variables such as waning vaccine effectiveness and the emergence of new variants, the number of patients could rise again.

Lee Sang-won, head of the Epidemiological Investigation and Analysis Division at the Central Disease Control Headquarters, stated, "The number of patients is decreasing by more than 30% weekly, and this decline is likely to continue for the time being," but added, "The decrease may stop, and a plateau phase may arrive in about one to two months." He further explained, "There is a possibility of a resurgence in patient numbers due to waning immunity over time and the emergence of variants," and added, "New infectious diseases are particularly difficult to predict regarding variant directions, so we are cautious against premature optimism or complacency."

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