As a result of the increase of COVID-19 instances, President Moon Jae-in on Monday cautioned against panic, saying that it might be the "final obstacle" in the country's return to normalcy.
"They say it's always black before the morning," Moon added, alluding to the record number of COVID cases in Korea at the time of the interview. "I believe that this is the final obstacle on the road to recovery." If we have faith in the government and work together, we will be able to make more rapid progress toward a regular existence."
A meeting of the COVID-19 Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters has held during which Moon gave his remarks. It was the first time he has presided over the meeting in more than six months, having done it on July 25th of last year as well.
While Moon acknowledged that it was difficult to anticipate how much longer the omicron surge would last, he asked people to be calm in the face of the situation.
It is not necessary to be unduly fearful, yet it is necessary to enhance the degree of anxiety, according to Moon. This variety may be defeated when people's mature citizenship, quarantine, and medical capacities are properly displayed," says the author.
He said that proactive home treatment, early introduction of oral treatments, and immunization had allowed Korea to keep the cumulative number of confirmed cases in relation to the population, as well as the cumulative mortality rate, at the lowest levels in the world.
In his remarks, he urged ministries to analyze if any adjustments to the omicron response mechanism now in place were required. "From now on, this is the true test - to respond to the omicron variation," he added.
The therapy of high-risk populations should be tailored to the features of the omicron form, which is highly transmissible but less severe, according to Moon, who also stressed the need of reducing the danger of catastrophic sickness and death.
Provided the number of confirmed infections continues to rise, "critical cases and mortality rates can be successfully reduced if they are handled stably and the medical response capacity is maintained," the authors write.
Similarly, health officials predicted that the number of daily confirmed cases might reach between 130,000 and 175,000 by the end of February, owing to the widespread of omicron strains.
Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency crisis response analyst Lee Sang-won explained that the projection is "the outcome of synthesizing all the epidemic speed, transmission possibilities, infection likelihood, and vaccine impact in the future." He went on to say that the majority of academics believed that Korea may be experiencing more than 130,000 illnesses every day.
"The detection rate of the omicron variant grew swiftly to 92.1 percent in the first week of this month," according to Jeong Eun-kyeong, commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.
According to her, the omicron form is at least twice as infectious as the delta variant, and the risk of transmission among family members or close contacts is also significantly higher than with the delta type.
"When compared to the delta version, the severity and mortality rates of the omicron variation are expected to be one-third to one-fifth lower," Jeong added. "However, it is believed that an epidemic among those over the age of 60 will result in significant sickness and death."
It was only later that the daily infection tally hit 30,000, after having surpassed 10,000 for the first time on Jan. 26. According to the latest available data, the number of new cases has climbed by 35,286 as of Sunday midnight, remaining above 30,000 for the third consecutive day. Local transmissions accounted for 35,131 of the new cases. The number of severely sick patients was 270, which was a decrease of two from the day before.
