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No more hesitating dealing with Covid-19: Korea Herald

2021-12-16 00:00:00.0 海峡时报-亚洲原网页

SEOUL (THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - The government is finally - and belatedly - moving to halt the phased program for a return to normal that began last month despite a flurry of warnings from medical experts and was followed by a record surge in new Covid-19 cases and deaths amid worries about the new omicron variant.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said Wednesday (Dec 15) the government considers the current virus situation as "very serious" and will implement stricter social distancing rules.

Details of new toughened social distancing measures, including reduced limits on private gatherings and curfews on business hours, are set to be announced Friday and enforced for the next two weeks.

The reversal of the social distancing program is, if anything, a reluctant admission by the Moon Jae-in administration that its hasty and short-sighted loosening of social distancing restrictions resulted in failure.

The much-touted "Living with Covid-19" scheme turned out to be a short-lived, costly experiment that sickened many more citizens and brought the country's already taxed medical system to a virtual paralysis.

Since Nov 1 when the restrictions were lifted, virus-related data has sounded alarms for almost all categories. The number of new infections and the death toll kept rising, while the intensive care beds for struggling patients dried up.

Collateral damage was also reported as patients with severe illnesses not linked to Covid-19 were unable to get proper treatment or surgery due to the lack of medical staff and hospital beds.

For all the dire warning signs, President Moon remained overly optimistic about the situation, as revealed in a town hall meeting late last month. At the time, the number of new cases had stayed above 3,000 for five days in a row but Moon did not have a sense of urgency, saying the government was "anticipating that the daily cases could rise as high as 5,000 or 10,000."

In retrospect, it is deeply regrettable that Moon then said the country "will not stop the gradual return to daily life just because the number of confirmed cases rises." Moon's overconfidence about the country's coronavirus policies was not new.

He earlier said Korea was responding to the virus "better than any other advanced country." While Moon was preoccupied with the success of the "K-quarantine," the number of cases exploded and the return to normal proved untenable.

The government - belatedly again - expanded the use of the virus pass and reduced the maximum number of private gatherings to six on Dec. 6, but the negative trend has not shown any signs of abating.

On Wednesday, the daily virus cases hit a fresh high of 7,850, compared with 1,684 recorded on Nov 1. The number of critically ill patients also reached an all-time high of 964. There were 70 deaths, down from a record high of 94 a day earlier.