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The streets of Seoul’s Myeongdong shopping district are nearly empty on Dec. 13. (Baek So-ah, staff photographer)

South Korea’s daily caseload of COVID-19 surpassed the 1,000 mark on Dec. 13, but infectious disease experts called the situation “predictable,” adding that the country’s current outbreak is likely to continue in the immediate future. Some offered dismal predictions that if the current trend keeps up, South Korea could end up like Japan, with over 2,000 cases a day. While some advocated implementing Level 3 social distancing measures, the government plans to acquire more hospital beds while massively increasing testing of presymptomatic/asymptomatic cases and young people as of Dec. 14.

The explosive increase in cases in the space of two days — from 689 on Dec. 11 to 950 on Dec. 12 and 1,030 on Dec. 13 — is the result of a failure to contain COVID’s spread in the Seoul Capital Area (SCA). As of Dec. 13, the SCA accounted for 786 out of 1,002 community cases, or 78.4%. A major factor was the emergence of large infection clusters in settings with high concentrations of high-risk individuals, such as nursing facilities and churches. Scattered infections in schools, activity clubs, public baths, workplaces, and after-school academies also contributed to the outbreak.

In a regular briefing the day before, Im Sook-young, director of the Central Disease Control Headquarters (CDCH) situation supervision team, said, “Infections have continued to spread and accumulate due to the kinds of personal gatherings and contact that disease control authorities can’t regulate.”

Over the week from Dec. 7 to 13, the average daily caseload stood at 719.7. While the number does not yet meet the official standard for upgrading to Level 3 distancing, experts are warning that the number of daily cases could multiply exponentially if the current distancing regime continues without results.

“The way the situation is unfolding right now is increasingly similar to the outbreak in Japan,” explained Kim Woo-joo, a professor of infectious disease at Korea University Guro Hospital.

“Japan is seeing over 3,000 cases per day, and if you look at it in terms of cases per million people, the numbers as of Dec. 11 were 22.96 for Japan and 18.53 for South Korea,” Kim said.

“We’re basically following a parallel trajectory to Japan with a lag of about one month,” he added. The South Korean government announced measures to acquire new hospital beds the same day, predicting a daily caseload of 1,000 patients in the SCA over the next 20 days. But according to Kim’s prediction, South Korea could end up seeing over 2,000 cases per day like Japan.

Patients in isolation numbered 10,372 as of Dec. 13, crossing the 10,000 mark. The number of patients in critical condition climbed to 179.

With the growing number of cases, a total of 580 patients who tested positive were still waiting at home for hospital beds on Dec. 13; 56 of them had been waiting for two days or longer.

Many experts called for upgrading distancing measures. Lee Jae-gap, a professor of infectious disease at Hallym University Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital, said, “It’s quite possible that we could end up with 2,000 to 3,000 [cases per day], which means this is not a situation where we can wait around to see whether Level 2.5 social distancing is effective.”

“We need to upgrade to Level 3,” Lee advised.

Kim Woo-joo stressed the need for what he referred to as “Level 3 plus alpha” measures.

“We need to prepare for a worst-case scenario. We should be considering something along the lines of what the New Zealand government did with issuing a ‘stay at home’ order to the public,” he suggested.

The government’s concern is that upgrading to Level 3 could cause massive social and economic damage. For now, it plans to massively increase testing through temporary screening centers, which are to be established starting Dec. 14. In Seoul, 55 temporary screening centers are to be opened in phases throughout the city’s 25 districts.

Ki Mo-ran, a professor of preventive medicine at the National Cancer Center, said, “If we can’t reduce contact through distancing, then we’ll need to quickly identify and isolate patients through an increase in testing.”

But a source from the medical community warned, “The healthcare system is in danger of collapsing from the inability to manage symptomatic patients, high-risk and critical patients in particular.”

“We need to quickly adapt our strategy and work to reduce deaths by focusing more on managing critical patients and high-risk groups,” the source advised.

By Suh Hye-mi, staff reporter

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