South Korea sees six-fold surge in hospitalised Covid patients in four weeks

Seoul, August 9 (IANS) The number of patients hospitalised for Covid-19 has grown sharply in South Korea recently amid a virus resurgence in summertime nationwide, health authorities said on Friday.

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the number of people admitted to 220 hospitals nationwide for Covid-19 came to 861 in the first week of August, the highest level since early February, Yonhap news agency reported.

The figure has grown rapidly from 148 in the second week of July to 226 in the third week, and 475 the following week.

The authorities have expected such an uptrend to continue through the end of this month.

The latest wave is sparked by the KP.3 subvariant of the fast-spreading omicron variant, which accounted for 45.5 percent of the total cases as of July.

Of the patients this month, 65.2 per cent were those aged 65 and older, followed by 18.1 per cent aged 50-64.

Despite the surge in the number of patients, more than 90 per cent of them suffer mild symptoms and the country can handle the situation under the current medical system.

However, the government decided to beef up monitoring of senior citizens and other high-risk groups and double up efforts to ensure stable supplies of medicine and test kits.

It will also resume the vaccination campaign in October, where high-risk groups will be administered vaccines for free.

"The risk of respiratory infections rises in summer as indoor places are not fully ventilated and people-to-people contacts can grow during vacation. It is crucial to abide by basic hygiene rules," KDCA chief Jee Young-mee said.

The US is also seeing a rise in Covid infections, driven by strains of the KP.3 variant, as per the latest updates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Over the past 2 weeks, the percentage of KP.3.1.1 sequences rose from 14.4 per cent to 27.8 per cent, while KP.3 currently makes up 21.1 per cent of sequences, the CDC said.