S. Korea's daily COVID-19 cases hover at 200,000 mark

South Korea’s new COVID-19 cases came to just under 200,000, continuing the recent downward trend, government data showed Wednesday.

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, the country added 195,419 COVID-19 cases during the 24 hours of Tuesday. The total caseload reached 15,830,644.

The number of new COVID-19 deaths came to 184 on Tuesday, bringing the death toll 20,034. The fatality rate stood at 0.13 percent.

The number of severe cases also reached 1,014 as of midnight Tuesday.

Daily COVID-19 cases continued to show a clear decreasing trend. The figure reported on Wednesday was slightly down from the previous day’s 210,755. It was also significantly lower, when compared to 286,294 a week ago and 424,642 from two weeks prior.

The country’s other COVID-19 figures have shown decreases as well.

The number of severe cases added during the first week of April reached 856, down 20.5 percent from a week earlier.

COVID-19 related deaths during the first week of this month also went down 6.4 percent from a week before to reach 2,163.

The country’s health authorities spoke positively about the recent decreases in the country’s COVID-19 figures, while mentioning that the government will soon introduce new antivirus measures.

“The government will announce adjusted social distancing rules and other measures that can help to normalize the medical system to pre-pandemic days during a COVID-19 response meeting on Friday,” Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol said Wednesday.

However, Kwon also stressed that “it is maybe too early to feel safe since the number of weekly COVID-19 deaths stays above 2,000, and there can be a large number of unreported COVID-19 cases.”

Meanwhile, the government added it will also start a second booster shot program for elderly people aged 60 and over, in a bid to reduce severe cases and deaths from COVID-19.


By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)