A medical worker sprays disinfectant at a COVID-19 screening center in Songpa district, Seoul, Wednesday. Newsis

Daily cases expected to reach 300,000 in mid-August

By Lee Hyo-jin

The government decided Wednesday to secure an additional 4,000 hospital beds, as well as increase the number of testing centers and the distribution of self-testing kits amid the resurgence of new COVID-19 infections caused by the fast-spreading BA.5 Omicron subvariant.

Some health experts, however, are urging the government to reintroduce social distancing measures at least to some extent before the infections spiral out of control. The country reported 76,402 new infections for Tuesday, including 429 from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 18,937,971, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). The number of critical cases stood at 96, with 12 new COVID-19-related fatalities.

The authorities predicted that the current wave will reach its peak between mid-August and the end of that month, during which the country may see up to 300,000 new infections per day.

Alarmed by the increasing number of infections, the Central Disease Control Headquarters announced Wednesday that it will set up 70 additional temporary testing centers ― 55 in the Seoul metropolitan area and 15 in other regions ― across the nation and expand the distribution of self-testing kits at convenience stores. It also obligated workers at nursing homes to take PCR tests on a weekly basis.

"If you look at the measures announced by the government so far, you can see that there's no strategy to reduce the current scale of the spread of the virus," Eom Joong-sik, an infectious disease expert at Gachon University Gil Medical Center said during an interview with local radio CBS.

"Now that the authorities have decided not to use preemptive distancing measures as a response, the virus will simply spread around freely, considering the increase in the number of people moving around and of person-to-person contact, as well as the vaccination rate and the high transmissibility of the variants," he warned.

A medical workers collects a nasal swab sample at a screening center in Mapo District, Seoul, Wednesday. Yonhap

During a COVID-19 briefing on Tuesday, KDCA chief Peck Kyung-ran reiterated her stance that bringing back social distancing measures is not being considered as an option at this point of time.

"Government-led quarantine regulations are not sustainable and they do not align with our policy directions. We will increase our efforts to minimize negative impacts (of pandemic response measures) on the public, considering the ongoing economic difficulties," she said.

She stressed that her agency will instead carry out quarantine measures based on individual "autonomy" and "responsibility," rather than government-led policies centered on control, which she views as unsustainable.

"We view social distancing measures as a last resort, which will be reviewed at a critical moment or in the case of the emergence of more fatal variants," said KDCA senior official Park Hye-kyung.

"This is an ongoing health crisis. The government needs to more actively step in if it wants to minimize damage to public safety," said Kim Woo-joo, an infectious disease expert, criticizing the government for not taking the current situation seriously enough.

He projected the situation to go from bad to worse, now that the BA.5 strain will become the dominant strain "very soon." It accounted for 47.2 percent of the total number of cases domestically during the second week of July, jumping from 23.7 percent during the first week.

Adding to the concerns is the recent arrival in the country of the BA.2.75 subvariant called "Centaurus," a heavily mutated Omicron strain which is known to be more contagious than any of its predecessors.

"If the two highly contagious strains begin to spread simultaneously, we may see a repeat of the fifth wave, which began with Omicron and then spiraled out of control due another of its subvariants," said Kim, recalling the virus situation earlier this year when the country was hit by the double whammy of the original Omicron strain and the BA.2 subvariant, also known as "stealth Omicron." During the fifth wave's peak last March, the number of new daily infections surpassed 626,000.