Starting March 1, people who have been in close contact with a COVID-19 patient will no longer need to quarantine regardless of their vaccination status in South Korea. This includes people living in the same household as someone isolating with an active infection. Currently unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people have to quarantine for seven days following a close contact exposure, while th...

Despite reassurances from health officials that hospitals are running smoothly, deaths continue to be reported in patients in South Korea before they get access to care. Two more children died after they were initially told to recover at home, raising the cumulative death toll in under-10s to five, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency’s latest updates. In North Gyeongs...

South Korea is no longer using Celltrion’s Regkirona, the only COVID-19 antibody drug approved for use in the country, after it was shown to be ineffective against the omicron variant. Omicron now accounts for nearly all new infections here. In a message to reporters Wednesday afternoon, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said it had stopped supplying Regkirona as of Feb. 18, conf...

The first known COVID-19 death in South Korea was a 63-year-old hospitalized at a closed ward of a psychiatric hospital in Cheongdo, North Gyeongsang Province. The man, who was schizophrenic, died with pneumonia on Feb. 19, 2020, at the hospital where he had been a resident for over 20 years. He tested positive postmortem. In less than a week after his death, six more at the hospital lost their ...

South Korea’s top health official said Monday the surge the country is experiencing now is necessary to move toward an endemic phase from the pandemic, and omicron’s milder severity aids the transition. Son Young-rae, the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s spokesperson, said the recent uptick in hospitalizations and deaths driven by the omicron variant “does not warrant the same level of alarm as ...

South Korea stopped monitoring COVID-19 patients younger than 60 beginning Feb. 10 in a switch to what is known as a self-care scheme, after the milder omicron overtook delta as the dominant strain here. But following deaths among younger patients isolating at home, concerns are rising over possible safety oversights in the new system. According to health authorities Monday, at least two pati...

A new president is about to be elected, leading South Korea through the next phase of the pandemic. So why is COVID-19 getting so little attention in the presidential race? It wasn’t until after a hospital bed shortage induced by the “living with COVID-19” scheme in November that the leading candidates -- the ruling Democratic Party of Korea’s Lee Jae-myung and main opposition People Power Par...

South Korea has changed the rules around voting to let people infected with COVID-19 cast their ballots in polling stations, as the omicron surge places record numbers of people under self-quarantine. On the second day of advance voting, March 5, and on the day of the presidential election, March 9, eligible voters with active cases will be able to vote in person past the regular hours, from 6 t...

South Korea is rolling out fourth doses of COVID-19 vaccines to immunocompromised individuals and residents of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities starting this month. Novavax’s vaccine will be offered to people who remain unvaccinated and also in a mixed regimen to people who have had an adverse reaction to a dose of a different vaccine. According to a Korea Disease Control and P...

As spring semester approaches amid the omicron surge, the South Korean government is mulling rapid antigen screening of students and staff as part of its back-to-school plans. The Ministry of Education said Monday rapid antigen testing may become a staple at kindergartens and the 1st through the 12th grade when the new semester begins in March. Earlier in the day, the ministry had announced tha...

Ahn Cheol-soo, the presidential candidate for South Korea’s centrist People Party, will prioritize sound judgments based on science over populism as Korea seeks a safe exit from the pandemic, according to his COVID-19 adviser. Dr. Park Jin-kyu, COVID-19 adviser to Ahn and the former Korea Medical Association vice president, told The Korea Herald that response has been swayed by political meddlin...

He said Korea no longer had strategy to bring down the patient numbers as the government abandons TTIQ -- test, trace, isolation, quarantine. So that foreshadows a greater burden for hospitals in the coming weeks, he said. Omicron has spread across Korea “more than 10 times as rapidly as delta did,” he said. “In about 2 1/2 months since omicron was first detected in Korea, daily case numbers hav...

COVID-19 patients recovering at home under the age of 60 will no longer be provided care and monitoring unless they are on Paxlovid, the Pfizer oral antiviral treatment, raising concerns for younger but vulnerable patients. Amid an omicron surge, a record 168,000 patients were under home recovery as of Monday afternoon across South Korea, exceeding the manageable maximum of 166,000 that was set ...

South Korea has switched to a do-it-yourself contact tracing scheme as the omicron variant changes how the outbreak is handled. And yet people are still required to scan personal QR codes that have so far allowed contact tracers to collect information about exactly where they visited and when. Starting Monday, those who test positive for COVID-19 will need to contact trace themselves through an ...

[코리아헤럴드=김아린 기자] “병실이 부족해 중환자실에 입장도 못하고 돌아가신 분들이 많았지요. 준비가 안 되어 있었던 거예요. 다시는 그런 일이 생겨서는 안 됩니다.” 정기석 국민의힘 코로나위기대응위원회 위원장은 지난 27일 코리아헤럴드와의 인터뷰에서 지난 2년간 문재인 정부가 자랑해왔던 ‘K-방역’을 두고 이같이 평가했다. 윤석열 국민의힘 대선후보 선거대책위원회는 지난 12월 정기석 한림대 성심병원 호흡기내과 교수를 코로나19 대응위원장으로 임명했다. 정 위원장은 메르스 직후인 2016~2017년에 질병관리본부장(현 질병관리청장)을 지내며 신종감염병 대응 체계 정비를 주도해 K-방역의 핵심인 3T(검사·추적·치료)의 초석을 다졌다. 정 위원장은 국민들이 보여준 협조에 비해 정부가 그에 상응하는 리...