COVID-19 deaths increase in South Korea

Seoul, South Korea (AP) — South Korea broke another daily record for COVID-19 deaths as health officials reported more than 621,000 new cases amid a wave of omicron strains on Thursday. This was worse than fear and risks breaking down the already borderline hospital system.

In the last 24 hours, it was confirmed that 429 deaths exceeded almost 140 from the previous mark set on Tuesday.The number of deaths may continue to increase in the coming weeks due to the interval between contagion, hospitalization and death.

The 621,266 new infections diagnosed by health officials were a daily record of breaking 400,624 previous infections the day before.This resulted in more than 8.2 million total COVID-19 cases nationwide, of which more than 7.4 million were recorded since the beginning of February.

The outbreak was much larger than the government expected, which claims that the omicrons are nearing its peak; authorities have tried to calm the fears of the population due to concerns about inadequate response to the crisis, arguing that the new variant is not as deadly as seasonal flu for vaccinated people and that it is less dangerous than the delta that hit the country in December and early January.

The per capita mortality rate of the epidemic is still much lower in the United States than in the United States or many European countries, which is considered by the authorities as a high vaccination rate. More than 68% of Koreans have received a booster dose of the vaccine.

However, some experts point out that health officials have clearly underestimated the impact of large-scale outbreaks on hospital workers who are already exhausted after overcoming the wave caused by delta.They criticize the government for sending false messages to the population by easing social restrictions and communicating the fact that omicrons caused mild symptoms of the disease.

Infections may be further aggravated by the fierce presidential campaign leading up to last week's elections, which also appears to have decreased political capacity to maintain a strong response to the outbreak.