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The country is successfully dealing with COVID-19, but now officials predict that the pandemic will continue for more than a month.
Head of the South Korean Centers for Disease Control dr. Jeong Eun-kyeong said that the first wave lasted until April.
However, new outbreaks of coronavirus have increased in the country since May, including outbreaks in nightclubs in the capital Seoul.
Between these periods, the number of new cases per day fell from almost a thousand to zero, with no new cases being detected for three consecutive days.
On Monday, authorities said 17 new cases of infection had been confirmed in the past 24 hours at several critical points: large offices and warehouses.
Dr. Ms Eun-kyeong said that she had concluded that the country was covered by a second wave of coronavirus due to recent new outbreaks of coronavirus. The woman added that she believes the pandemic will continue.
To date, South Korea’s disease control centers have claimed that the first wave in South Korea has not yet ended.
However, dr. Eun-kyeong said it was now clear that the holiday weekend in early May ushered in a new wave of infections. The new wave is spreading across the broader part of Seoul, where only a few cases have been identified in the past.
“We believe that the first wave in the capital district lasted from March-April and February-March,” said Dr. Dr. during a regular press conference. J. Eun-kyeong. “So it would turn out that we now have the second wave, which started after the holidays in May.”
In late February, the number of new cases per day in South Korea exceeded 900. This was the first large-scale outbreak of coronavirus outside of China. Through an intensive surveillance and investigation program, the number of new cases was reduced to single digits in late April.
Unfortunately, as soon as the country announced the reduction of social isolation requirements in early May, new outbreaks emerged, partly caused by infections among young people who visited Seoul’s nightclubs and bars over the holiday weekend. Reuters reports.
“Initially, we predicted that the second wave would start in the fall or winter,” explained Dr. J. Eun-kyeong. – It seems that our predictions were wrong. We believe that as long as people are in close contact with each other, the infection will continue. “
The city of Daejeon, south of the capital, announced Monday that it would ban screening in public places such as museums and libraries when multiple small outbreaks of the virus were detected.
The Seoul mayor also warned that strict social isolation rules could be reinstated in the capital if the average number of new COVID-19 cases in the next three days exceeds 30 and the occupation of beds in Seoul hospitals exceeds 70 percent.
South Korea managed to escape universal quarantine. Instead, the country relied on voluntary measures of social isolation and an aggressive (follow-up) strategy and research to combat the virus.
Since the first coronavirus case was reported on January 20, COVID-19 has claimed the lives of 280 people in South Korea. More than 12 thousand. infections and an estimated 1,277 people remain ill.
WHO chief: coronavirus pandemic continues to accelerate
The pace of the new coronavirus pandemic continues to rise and its effects will be felt for decades, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday in a web conference.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a health forum in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that the greatest threat to the world today is not the virus itself, but “a lack of global solidarity and global leadership. “
“We cannot overcome this pandemic in a divided world,” he said. – The politicization of the pandemic has exacerbated this. None of us will be safe until we are all safe. “
The WHO warned last week of a dangerous new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were already tired of quarantine measures, even though the disease was still spreading rapidly.
The new coronavirus, which has claimed more than 465,000 lives of almost 9 million. Outbreaks in America and parts of Asia continue to intensify, although austerity measures are already beginning to ease in Europe.
Quarantine measures in an effort to stop the spread of the virus have done significant damage to the economy, but the WHO says the pandemic remains a major threat.
“The pandemic is still accelerating,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a virtual conference.
“We know that this pandemic is much bigger than that. [vien] health crisis; or – [taip pat] economic crisis, social crisis and, in many countries, political crisis. Its impact will be felt in the coming decades, “said the WHO chief.
The COVID-19 vaccine is unlikely to be available in a few months, although trials have already been started in several of them. Additionally, researchers are becoming increasingly aware of the new virus, its symptoms, and the extent of its spread before the first officially confirmed cases of infection.
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