Contrary to the diagnosis of foreign experts that South Koreans have high trust in the public health system, the Korean quarantine authorities continued their “base disease isolation attack” as a psychological warfare to lower the fatality rate, diluting the initial low fatality rate by diluting the recently increasing number of critically ill patients.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the 31st that South Korea is highly likely to be the first country to transition to an endemic due to reasons such as high vaccination rate and low fatality rate.
The report was based on an epidemiological expert, Professor Monica Gandhi of the University of California School of Medicine, in an evaluation that “Korea has the appropriate means to escape the pandemic, such as a high vaccination rate of 97% and high trust in the public health system.” It could be the first country to transition to
Prime Minister Kim Bu-gyeom said in a major script on the 25th, "In the fight against Corona that has been going on for more than two years, we have minimized the sacrifice of precious people to less than one-tenth compared to other countries with similar populations."
On the 18th, Park Hyang, head of the quarantine division at Jung Soo-bon, said, “After the peak of the epidemic is over, we are considering converting the legal infectious disease to level 2”.
Sohn Yeong-rae, head of the social strategy division at Jung Soo-bon, told reporters on the 24th, "Today, there are 1,081 cases of critically ill patients, which is slowing down compared to the increase in the number of confirmed cases, but the death toll is 470." It seems that death due to severe underlying disease in the absence of symptoms of Omicron was also caught as corona death." At a briefing on the 22nd, Director Son said, "The number of patients with severe cases is maintaining at 1,100 while the number of confirmed cases is increasing." Respiratory symptoms worsened due to this, and most of the other three-quarters patients were hospitalized in the intensive care unit due to worsening of the underlying disease.” It is not easy to analyze how much influence the
Director Sohn said on the 25th, "The cumulative fatality rate is still low at 0.13%." He also said, "There are various interpretations of the number of deaths, but it seems that the case of severe patients due to underlying diseases dying from underlying diseases in the absence of Omicron symptoms was caught in the death statistics as well," he said.
Professor Eom Joong-sik of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Gachon University Gil Hospital said, “Even the medical staff who monitor the patient’s condition every day is difficult to distinguish whether the death was caused by the corona itself or the underlying disease worsened. It is very irresponsible to explain that the number of deaths due to the increase in the number of deaths while publishing statistics is due to an increase in the number of underlying diseases.”
Professor Kim Woo-joo of the Department of Infectious Diseases at Korea University Guro Hospital said, “More than 90% of the corona deaths have underlying diseases, and for this reason, patients with underlying diseases are treated as 'high-risk groups for Corona' from the beginning. distorting it,” he said.
As of 00:00 on the 31st of the broadcast, there were 327,743 new confirmed cases, and the number of severe cases was 1,315, 14 more than the previous day's 1,301, which was the highest in history.
In the past week, the number of patients with severe severe disease has increased from 1,085 → 1164 → 1216 → 1273 → 1215 → 1301 → 1,315, the highest number ever since yesterday.
The WSJ report contrasted the low fatality rate in Korea with a cumulative fatality rate of 0.12%, which was lower than that of the United States (1.22%), the United Kingdom (0.79%), and Japan (0.44%) in Korea's data, which was taken for two years from the initial stage to the latest.
The report went on to say that the South Korean government also used digital surveillance, including phone GPS data, to track close contacts, and that there were elements of human rights violations.