South Korea reports record number of deaths from COVID-19

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea reported on Tuesday its highest daily death toll so far in the pandemic with 293 deaths from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, at a time when the country is dealing with a historic spike in coronavirus infections driven by the highly contagious omicron variant.

The 1,196 COVID-19 patients in serious or critical condition are also a new all-time high. Health authorities noted that the country's medical response remains stable after efforts to expand resources, and more than 30 per cent of the intensive care units designated for the care of this disease are still available. However, the pressure on the hospital system is expected to increase in the coming weeks, if the period between infections, hospitalizations and deaths is taken into account.

“We anticipate that the number of (serious or critical cases) will increase to around 2,000. We are preparing our medical response for that,” said Park Hyang, a senior official in the Ministry of Health, during a press meeting.

South Korea has reported a daily average of some 337,000 new cases over the past seven days, including 362,283 on Tuesday, which means a more than 80-fold increase from mid-January levels, when omicron became the dominant variant. The total number of infections in the country now exceeds 7.2 million, and more than 6.4 million of them have been registered since February.

Park said that due to high vaccination rates, the country has so far avoided the uptick by omicron with fewer deaths than in the United States and Europe, where the variant reached earlier. More than 62% of South Koreans have received their booster dose.

So far, South Korea has 17.6 deaths from COVID-19 per 100,000 people, compared to 285.5 deaths in the United States and 237.5 in Great Britain, according to the Korea Agency for Disease Control and Prevention (KDCA).

The omicron variant has forced South Korea to set aside a strict COVID-19 response based on large-scale diagnostic testing, aggressive contact tracing and quarantines, in order to focus limited medical resources on priority groups, including people over 60 and those with underlying medical conditions. The country will also begin vaccinating children aged 5 to 11 years later this month.

More than 1.6 million carriers of the virus with mild and moderate symptoms have been asked to isolate at home to save space in hospitals, the KDCA said.