hankyoreh

People wait to get tested at a screening center in Seoul’s Gangnam District on Dec. 7. (Yonhap News)

South Korea reported 615 new cases of COVID-19 on Dec. 7, posting more than 600 cases for the second day in a row. With the country grappling with its largest outbreak so far, the medical system is facing a shortage of hospital space.

A patient in the Seoul Capital Area (SCA) whose symptoms worsened was unable to be transferred to a different facility. In Gyeonggi Province, over 300 patients are still at home, waiting to be assigned hospital beds. Seoul has even decided to house COVID-19 patients in shipping containers set up in empty spaces on hospital premises.

Sources at Korea’s Central Disaster Management Headquarters (CDMH) and the National Medical Center told the Hankyoreh on Monday that the joint situation response room at the National Medical Center had been unable to process a transfer request received the previous evening for a COVID-19 patient with worsening symptoms. That was the first time that no hospital beds were available for critically ill patients in the SCA area since the third wave of the pandemic began.

According to figures provided by the CDMH, 45 hospital beds were immediately available for critically ill patients as of Dec. 6. In Greater Seoul, that figure included five in Seoul and Incheon and one in Gyeonggi Province.

But in reality, there were zero beds in the SCA that could actually be assigned to critically ill patients. The CDMH figures simply tabulate figures provided by various hospitals, leading to inconsistencies in actual availability.

“Even if hospital administrators submit data about immediately available beds, there are hospitals that aren’t in a position to accept patients right away. The only way we can handle the current wave is for large hospitals in the private sector to open up more of their intensive care units,” said Jung Ki-hyeon, director of the National Medical Center.

Despite these circumstances, the CDMH didn’t have a proper grasp of the situation. “We’re in the process of verifying why transfers haven’t been going through at hospitals in Greater Seoul,” said Park Mi-ra, head of the CDMH’s patient and hospital bed management team.

By the end of Monday, Korea had 126 seriously or critically ill patients who require oxygen treatment or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, representing an increase of 45 from two weeks prior, when there were 81.

“There are currently 177 beds dedicated to treating critically ill patients. We will increase that number to 274 by Dec. 15,” said Health Minister Park Neung-hoo, who is also first deputy director of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters, on Sunday.

In addition to beds for the critically ill, medical staff also report a serious shortage of regular hospital beds. In Gyeonggi Province, the number of patients who are at home, waiting to be assigned a hospital bed, rose to 366 on Monday. Until recently, there were only 20-30 people a day waiting for hospital beds.

Among the 366 people on the waiting list, 76 are people with high fever and other worrying symptoms, pregnant women who need constant medical supervision, children, and patients who need dialysis.

“Since Dec. 5, we’ve been telling patients who need to be hospitalized to wait at home. There were 622 [COVID-19] patients hospitalized in Gyeonggi Province on that day. The percentage of people in residential treatment centers [711] and people waiting at home has risen to 68.4% of the total patients in quarantine,” said Lim Seung-gwan, joint director of Gyeonggi Province’s COVID-19 emergency task force.

“Based on our experience during the first and second waves, the percentage of [COVID-19] patients who are hospitalized needs to represent at least 40% of the total. If that’s not the case, it means that some people aren’t receiving the treatment they need,” Lim explained.

As of Sunday, 87.65% of Seoul’s 1,093 ordinary hospital beds and 87.14% of Gyeonggi Province’s 630 ordinary hospital beds were in use. The medical community generally regards an 85% utilization rate as the limit given various conditions, including the medical workforce.

In response, Seoul has designated 107 more hospital beds for treating COVID-19, including 81 at Seoul Metropolitan Dongbu Hospital. The city also announced on Monday that it will set up containers in vacant areas of municipal hospitals to create space for 150 more patients.

Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) decided on Monday to ease the standards for releasing patients from quarantine so as to increase the turnover of hospital beds. Previously, asymptomatic patients were released if they showed no symptoms for 10 days after testing positive or if they tested negative twice, 24 hours apart, seven days after testing positive. But from now on, they’ll no longer have to wait for seven days.

The standards have also changed for patients with symptoms. Until now, they’ve had to go 72 hours without fever, 10 days after contracting the disease, but now the fever-free period has been reduced to 24 hours. They can also be released from quarantine if they test negative twice, 24 hours apart, even if seven days haven’t passed since they first tested positive.

By Choi Ha-yan and Park Tae-woo, staff reporters

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