South Korea's fresh surges of COVID-19 woes with Omicron variant prompt

As South Korea continues to report record-high critical infections and deaths from the pandemic after halting its "Living with COVID-19" program, experts are urging the government to take more measures to tackle the challenge.

Jung Jae-hun, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at Gachon University College of Medicine in South Korea, said the country's program of phased easing of pandemic curbs failed to control the rate of step-by-step recovery to normalcy.

There was also an unexpected increase in the number of new confirmed COVID cases amid a decrease in the effectiveness of the two-dose vaccine, said Jung, who is a special advisor on COVID-19 at the Prime Minister's Secretariat.

"In particular, the increase in critically ill patients was so fast that the government triggered a circuit breaker," said Jung.

South Korea reimposed strict anti-pandemic measures on Dec 18 after easing them under its phased living with COVID program in November. The about-turn came after weeks of continuous rise in the number of daily new infections and critical cases, despite having a fully-vaccinated rate of 82 percent.

The number of critically ill patients recorded a new high of 1,083 on Dec 23, breaking the earlier record of 1,063 that was reported the previous day, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, or KDCA.

A total of 109 COVID-19 deaths were also reported that day, representing another record high. That raised the nation's total pandemic death toll to 5,015.

The national tally of COVID-19 cases stood at 589,978, after 6,919 more cases were added.

The occupancy rate in intensive care units for COVID-19 patients was 79.2 percent, with that of the Seoul capital area reaching 85.7 percent, according to data released by South Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare on Dec 22. Both figures were above the 75 percent saturation point set by the government.

Nearly 32,000 people were undergoing home treatment while waiting to be admitted to hospitals, as of Dec 22.

South Korea has been struggling to deal with a shortage of hospital beds. The government said on Dec 22 that it will secure an extra 10,000 hospital beds for COVID-19 patients by mid-January, raising the total number to 25,000.

The government said on Dec 23 that it expect the figures for critical cases and deaths to decrease next week, according to Yonhap News Agency.

"We should take a much more aggressive approach to people who are being treated at home," said David Kwak, clinical assistant professor at the Soon Chun Hyang University Hospital in Seoul.

Kwak said it is important to provide the patients with much more keen and higher level of observation, monitoring and treatment, in order to prevent people with mild symptoms from becoming more severe cases.

Kwak said a key concern he has is that the country is falling behind in administering booster shots in order to overcome the potential Omicron virus variant dominance.

South Korea shortened on Dec 10 the vaccination interval for COVID-19 booster shots to three months. As of Dec 23, only about 26.7 percent of its population has received a third jab.

South Korea reported a total of 246 Omicron variant infections as of Dec 23, including 164 domestic transmissions and 82 imported cases, but Kwak said the actual number of domestically transmitted cases could possibly be on a much larger scale.

Omicron, identified as a "variant of concern" by the World Health Organization on Nov 26, has spread to 89 countries as of Dec 16.

Health authorities have raised the possibility that Omicron will become the dominant variant in South Korea within the next one to two months.

Though Omicron is said to pose higher reinfection risk and weaken vaccine protection, Jung from Gachon University said the severity may be, based on current studies, low in re-infected or vaccinated people.

"The rapid spread itself will be a problem in East Asian countries," said Jung, adding that slowing the transmission rate is important since it is difficult to block the influx of the new variant forever.

"The biggest problem in East Asian countries, including Korea, is that, with successful policies up to this point, the proportion of people who acquired immunity through infection other than vaccination is very small," said Jung, noting successful controls in the past may be risk factors for the future.

The escalating pandemic situation has not only created burden to the health system but also South Korea's economy due to curfews on business hours and a reduced maximum private gathering size of four.

While the actual economic cost remains unknown, Yang Jun-sok, an economics professor at The Catholic University of Korea, said the reinstated restrictions have caused quite a bit of ruckus, especially with small business owners as some may have to shut down if the social distancing rules are continued for an extended period of time.

Noting that the government has announced supportive measures, including paying 1 million won ($842) each to pandemic-hit small business owners, Yang said the subsidy, which is less than the average monthly income in South Korea, is not enough.

The shortage in ICU beds will also lead to a reduction in consumption demand for face-to-face services as people are afraid of getting infected, which may hurt small businesses even more, said Yang.

"We are perhaps depending too much on distancing and vaccination… but that's because these are the only tools that we have at the moment," said Yang.