This summer, the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic has passed… Hospitalizations decreased by 20.1%: This era’s newspaper archive, Sisa Ilbo

This summer, the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic has passed… Hospitalizations decreased by 20.1%: This era’s newspaper archive, Sisa Ilbo

August 30, 2024 Catherine Williams - Chief Editor Tech

▲ ‘If you have fever or respiratory symptoms, wear a mask’ ©

[시사일보=최한규 기자] The COVID-19 pandemic peaked this summer and has begun to decline.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency announced on the 30th that it had made this judgment after analyzing the epidemic trends through a multi-layered surveillance system, including COVID-19 hospitalized patient sample surveillance, pathogen surveillance, and monitoring of emergency room patients last week.

Currently, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency is conducting surveillance of COVID-19 hospitalized patients at 220 hospital-level medical institutions nationwide, and is identifying COVID-19 hospitalized patients through surveillance of severe acute respiratory infection at 42 general hospital-level medical institutions.

The number of hospitalized patients under surveillance decreased after 875 cases occurred between January 28 and February 3 of this year, but increased significantly starting last month. However, from the 18th to the 24th of this month, it decreased by 20.1% compared to the previous week, reaching 1,170 cases.

In the case of severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) surveillance, the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients peaked at 83 on the 4th to 10th of this month and then decreased for two consecutive weeks. Last week, only 46 cases were reported.

The detection rate of the COVID-19 pathogen and the concentration of the COVID-19 virus in wastewater also decreased.

Last week, the COVID-19 pathogen detection rate was 39.0%, down 4.4 percentage points from the previous week, and the COVID-19 virus concentration measured at 84 sewage treatment plants nationwide also dropped by 3 percentage points.

The number of COVID-19 patients visiting emergency rooms began to slow down on the 11th of this month, dropping significantly to 8,025 last week compared to the previous week (13,250).

Regarding the downward trend in the COVID-19 epidemic indicator, Director General of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency Ji Young-mi said, “It is thanks to the diligent adherence to COVID-19 infection prevention guidelines such as hand washing and cough etiquette,” and “The number of COVID-19 patients is expected to be less than 200,000, which is much lower than the initial estimate of a weekly maximum of 350,000.”