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People line up to get tested at a screening center next to the Nowon District Office in Seoul on Nov. 26. (Yonhap News)

There are concerns that the third wave of COVID-19 that’s currently concentrated in the Seoul Capital Area (SCA) could affect even more people than South Korea’s first and second waves. The number of new cases reported on Nov. 26 was the most the country had seen in eight months, and disease control authorities expect the average daily caseload to fall within the range of 400-600 by the beginning of December.

Since the current outbreak is spreading rapidly through Greater Seoul, which has five times the population of Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province (where the first wave occurred), this is a dangerous situation, and it’s hard to say when the wave will crest.

Disease control authorities attributed the sharp jump in new cases on Thursday — 583, up 200 from the previous day — to a spate of midsize infection clusters at an aerobics studio and a military base, among other locations.

Authorities had identified 68 cases (as of noon on Thursday) at a military base in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province, and the cumulative total linked to a church in Seoul’s Mapo District rose to 119.

A total of 66 cases have been diagnosed at an aerobics studio in Seoul’s Gangseo District. One of the infected individuals works at a nursing home, which has led to more cases of the disease. An infection cluster involving at least 15 people has also been reported at the Nowon District Office, in Seoul.

“Multiple sites of infection are being reported simultaneously around the country. Those sites involve various routes of infection, including restaurants, schools, saunas, churches, and military bases,” said Lee Sang-won, head of the contact tracing analysis team at South Korea’s Central Disease Control Headquarters, during the daily briefing on Tuesday. Such circumstances limit authorities’ ability to manage the outbreak.

One of the features of the current outbreak is that it’s spreading in locations of all kinds among young people who are frequently on the move in the densely populated SCA, which accounted for 402 of the 583 new cases reported on Thursday.

Contact tracing was easier in the first wave, which largely spread through members of the Shincheonji religious sect in Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province, which has a population of 5.12 million. But Seoul and its satellite cities are densely populated with around 26 million people, and there’s much more internal movement in the area.

On Thursday, people in their 20s and 30s accounted for 35.7% of the new infections. Younger people are often asymptomatic carriers of the coronavirus. That puts them at risk of becoming “silent spreaders” at the community level.

“The number of confirmed cases is increasing too rapidly for us to predict,” said Park Yu-mi, head of civic health for the city of Seoul. Korea’s daily caseload of COVID-19 during the first and second waves maxed out at 909 (on Feb. 29) and 441 (on Aug. 27), respectively.

“When a single COVID-19 patient turns up and we test their friends and family, dozens of people test positive at the same time,” said Ki Mo-ran, a professor of preventive medicine at the National Cancer Center.

“That shows that there are quite a few infected individuals around the country. This wave is probably even bigger than the second wave back in August, which was also centered in the capital area,” Ki said.

“Since transmission never ended at the community level, infection links that had gone undetected are proliferating now that the winter is upon us,” said Choi Yeong-jun, a professor of community medicine at the Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital.

The spike in patients in the capital area is spreading concerns that Korea may run out of hospital space for COVID-19 patients. The public health authorities said that, so far, there don’t seem to be any examples of patients being told to wait at home because of a shortage of hospital beds. But if the wave continues, the residential treatment centers in the SCA are likely to reach capacity soon.

As of Nov. 25, there were already 1,334 individuals at 10 treatment centers in the Seoul region, which can house 2,153 individuals. That means the facilities, on average, are operating at 62% of capacity.

The situation is particularly troubling in Gyeonggi Province, where more than 60 people have tested positive for COVID-19 at a local military base. “With 40-100 people being added to a waiting list for the residential treatment centers each day, we’re discussing the idea of opening more centers and planning to admit patients on a priority basis, depending on their physical condition.”

By Seon Dam-eun, Suh Hye-mi and Park Tae-woo, staff reporters

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