South Korea recorded close to 500,000 new Covid-19 cases on Wednesday signalling a rebound after a short-lived dip in the number of cases, news agency Korea Herald said in a report. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 490,881 new cases taking the overall caseload to 10,427,247.
The recent caseload increase also showed that one out of every 5 Koreans were infected with Covid-19. The death toll due to Covid-19 reached 13,432, up 291 from Tuesday, the report further said. The number of hospitalised Koreans remains more than 1,000 for more than a fortnight.
Experts speaking to the Korean news agency attributed the rebound and continual rise in cases to the so-called stealth Omicron variant. At least 20% of the population is currently infected and scientists have said that they are yet to reach the peak. More than 1,800,000 people are living in home quarantine after contracting Covid-19. South Korea has vaccinated 86.6% of its population fully and has administered booster shots to 63.2% of the population.
Ma Sang-hyuk, vice president of the Korean Vaccine Society, last week said that the rate of infections is so high that if someone is not infected it is likely that the person has no friends. Sang-hyuk posted this on Facebook and later deleted it but the message spread around social media channels widely casting a glimpse of the crisis South Korea is tackling with regard to Omicron.
Another report by news agency Associated Press (AP) quoted officials who asked South Korea’s 60 crematoriums to burn for longer hours starting last week owing to a record number of fatalities. Seoul, which is the centerpoint of the outbreak, has not been able to ease the backlog of bodies waiting to be cremated.
The crematoriums have increased their capacity from around 1,000 to 1,400 cremations per day. The report also said that families were struggling to arrange for funerals due to the longer wait for cremations. Senior Health Ministry official Son Youngrae told AP that regional crematories were instructed to furnace operations from five times to seven times a day to match those present in the greater Seoul area.
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