What’s happening with COVID-19 in South Korea? The December Edition.

Around the world, an estimated 71,536,243 people now have been diagnosed with COVID-19. More than 1,603,500 have died. These are the reported numbers and are believed to be an underestimate. Sadly, the United States continues to have a very high proportion of the world’s cases.

We last posted about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on South Korea at the end of August. At that time, we reported that when we arrived in South Korea (ROK) on July 31, the count of new COVID cases for the day was 36. On August 14, our first day out of quarantine, that number was 103. On August 27, it was 441, the highest total since the pandemic spiked here in March.

At that time, South Korea had a 3-tiered response system for social distancing and other COVID guidelines. By the end of August, Seoul (and some other areas of the country) had been placed under level 2.5 in this system, under which:

• Wearing masks in any public place, indoors and outdoors, was mandated in Seoul.
• Schools, churches, gyms, museums, galleries, bars, singing rooms (karaoke rooms), cyber cafes, and large restaurants were closed.
• All private and public indoor meetings of 50 or more and outdoor meetings of over 100 were banned.
• Cafes could offer to-go service only, and restaurants were take-out only after 9 pm. Restaurants, bakeries, and cafes were required to have customers sign entry logs for contact tracing.
• Many businesses had employees work from home.

September-October 2020

At the end of September, the government asked citizens not to travel for Chuseok, one of the most important family holidays of the year. A large percentage of citizens complied.

By the beginning of October, the average number of new cases in the country per day had dropped well below 100, the Korean government’s ongoing goal for coronavirus management. Gradually, the level 2.5 restrictions were lifted, and by the middle of October life felt pretty normal again. (At least what passes for “normal” in the context of a global pandemic.) Mandatory mask-wearing is the law here, so everyone continues to follow that practice. We also continue to sign in with our district of residence and phone number at any public place for contact tracing purposes.

As you perhaps noticed if you follow our posts, we have been able to safely travel around Korea, go out with groups of friends, visit indoor exhibits at museums, and eat at restaurants without much worry. We have felt very fortunate to be here and also very worried about friends and family in other parts of the world.

November-December 2020

Unfortunately, as the weather gets colder and more activities move indoors, the ROK’s numbers are on the rise again. On November 14, the number of daily cases in the country reached 205, and it has climbed steadily since then. This month, the number of new cases per day has remained between 500 and 700.

On December 11, there are 689 new cases, 673 of those domestically transmitted (as opposed to imported by a traveler entering quarantine in Korea). This is the highest number of new daily cases in South Korea since the end of February.

After the fall outbreak, South Korea amended its 3-tier pandemic response system to a 5-tier system (1, 1.5, 2, 2.5 and 3). Since December 8, Seoul and the surrounding region have been under level 2.5 again. All the restrictions as listed above are now back in place. The rest of the country remains under level 2.

Religious, family, and social Christmas and New Year gatherings are canceled here just as I imagine they are canceled for many of you. Indoor gatherings of more than 50 people are not allowed. There are noticably fewer people on the streets of Seoul this week.

The ROK healthcare system is feeling the pinch, and there are concerns that hospitals will run out of beds for seriously ill patients. This month, the government will enact a plan to set up temporary hospital beds to increase capacity. The United States has nearly 30 ICU beds per 100,000 inhabitants. By the same measure, South Korea has 10 per 100,000. Part of aggressively managing the COVID pandemic is ensuring that there are enough healthcare resources to care for those who become critically ill.

Vital Statistics

As of December 11, this is where the numbers in South Korea stand:

• Total cases confirmed since January: 40,786
• Total persons deceased since January: 572
• Fatality rate: 1.4%
• Patients currently isolated (either at home or in a facility): 9,057

South Korea continues to focus on testing and contact tracing as primary means of managing the pandemic. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported it now is completing as many as 70,000 tests per day.

Because of contact tracing, we know that:

• 40.1 percent of current infections were contracted by contact with individual confirmed patients.
• 28.4 percent were linked to clusters of infections, and 6 percent were connected to hospitals and nursing homes.
• Between 15 and 20 percent of cases have been untraceable – having no clear route of transmission.
• Recent cluster infections have been traced to a restaurant, several schools, a church, a nursing home, a military facility, and several informal social gatherings.

One of the really useful outcomes of vigilant contact tracing is that the government has targeted its social distancing recommendations to restricting those activities that are known contributors to virus spread. For instance, they know when to close schools and they know what types of businesses are most likely to have cluster infections. Check out this new article about how contact tracing works and the valuable information South Korean tracers are gathering.

What’s Next?

South Korea plans to vaccinate its population against the COVID virus. It reportedly has ordered enough vaccine for 88 percent of its people. However, it plans to wait until March to begin vaccinating in order to continue evaluating the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. Government officials seem to feel comfortable with waiting given their relative success in managing the pandemic so far, though several other countries outrank South Korea for their overall coronavirus response.

The media has reported some criticism against the government for not acting faster to enact restrictions at the start of the current spike. Despite numbers hovering around 700 new cases per day, at this time there evidently are not any plans to raise restrictions to the highest level.

(Update: on December 12 KST, the number of new COVID cases in South Korea reached 950, so we will wait to see if any further restrictions are forthcoming.)

The government has announced that on December 14 it will open an additional 150 testing sites for anyone to present for free, anonymous testing, providing only their phone number for contact tracing. In addition, the government will begin deploying military personnel to assist with testing and contact tracing.

We are bundling up and staying outdoors more. No museums or galleries for us for a while. I foresee lots of wintry walks in our future! Fortunately, we have friends now to walk with, so we will not be lonely.

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We stayed busy with activities in the fall and haven’t even gotten to post yet about many of them, so though some posts may be “retrospective” for a while, we will keep them coming. Stay safe, friends!