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Here’s what South Korea is doing to prevent a third wave of COVID-19

  • South Korea is imposing stricter coronavirus measures to prevent its third wave COVID-19 infections from getting out of hand.
  • Korea registered more than 600 cases for two days in a row and fears it would reach 900 daily infections by next week without more restrictions.
  • The US reported 227,885 new cases on Friday, the new worldwide record for the pandemic.

The US had its worse coronavirus day on Friday when 227,885 new cases were registered. A day earlier, the daily death toll hit 2,879, a new record for the country. More than 100,000 people are hospitalized, with hundreds of thousands battling the illness at home. Health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci fear that the worse is yet to come as the effects of Thanksgiving travel and get-togethers are only starting to appear in statistics. The upcoming holidays might drive up infections even further, as families celebrate Christmas and New Year’s.

227,885 daily cases translates to 9,495 cases every hour or 158 diagnoses per minute. South Korea is now taking more drastic measures to prevent the daily cases from reaching a figure the US hits every 6 minutes.


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The comparison isn’t necessarily accurate. First of all, a COVID-19 PCR test takes some time, so calculating hourly averages isn’t exactly possible. South Korea’s population sits at over 51 million, nearly 6.5 times smaller than America’s. Put differently, Korea has registered just 38,000 cases and 549 deaths in all, while the United States has confirmed 15.2 million cases and nearly 290,000 fatalities during the same period.

South Korea is taking stricter health measures after registering more than 600 daily cases two days in a row. The fear is that the country could reach 900 daily cases by next week, which would be a record for Korea’s COVID-19 epidemic so far.

The nation has been one of the models to follow when it comes to strategies for keeping the number of infections low. The Korean and Italian COVID-19 outbreaks began almost simultaneously in mid-February, and both of them worsened with every day that got us closer to March. But then something strange happened. Italy wasn’t able to prevent the spread, and the number of cases got out of control, leading to thousands of infections and deaths. On the other hand, Korea took stricter measures, including face mask use, ample testing and contact tracing, and social distancing. This helped it beat the first wave, flattening the curve by March 11. The second wave started in mid-August, but the number of daily cases did not reach 450. The curve was largely flattened a month later.

The number of infections has been increasing steadily in the country since the first weeks of November, and now the government is fearing a new spike. That’s why new social distancing measures are to take effect on Tuesday, as authorities want to prevent losing control of the epidemic.

“The capital area is now a COVID-19 war zone,” Health Minister Park Neung-hoo said on Monday at a government meeting, reports NPR. Half of the country’s population lives in or near Seoul, and most cases are in or around the capital.

While the situation is incomparable to what’s happening in the US and Europe, the Korean medical system is still showing signs of stress. Only 55 ICU beds are available nationwide to coronavirus patients.

The government raised social distancing measures to the second-highest level in greater Seoul and third-highest elsewhere. Gatherings for more than 50 people are now banned, public transportation will be reduced after 9:00 PM, and nightclubs and gyms will close.

President Moon Jae-in called for increased use of antigen tests to find COVID-19 cases faster and the mobilization of more human resources for contact tracing. Korea is still in a place where contact tracing might work. The process involves finding all the possible contacts of infected individuals to prevent further transmission. But contact tracing is harder in communities where transmission is high, and this seems to be the case in Korea as well.

While Korea’s handling of the pandemic still seems to be much better than in many other countries, local experts still criticize the government. They say the latest set of restrictions is coming two weeks too late and that the government has relaxed restrictions too soon after the second wave.

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