A man arrives at a coronavirus testing center in Yongsan, central Seoul, on Oct. 19, 2022. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 20 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s new COVID-19 cases continued to stay below 30,000 Thursday as the country’s virus curve has moved down in recent months.
The country reported 25,431 new COVID-19 infections, including 53 from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 25,219,546, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.
Thursday’s figure is down 4,072 from a day ago. It also declined by around 1,500 from a week ago and 3,200 from two weeks ago.
The country reported 23 deaths from COVID-19 on Thursday, raising the death toll to 28,922. The fatality rate stood at 0.11 percent. The number of critically ill patients came to 249, up six from a day earlier, the KDCA said.
South Korea’s virus curve has been on the general decline since peaking at over 180,000 cases on Aug. 17.
In response to the pandemic’s slowdown, the government has eased antivirus restrictions, including lifting all outdoor mask mandates and the COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction testing requirement for inbound travelers to return to pre-pandemic normalcy.
Starting from November, the government will fully resume its visa-waiver program for 91 nations as a reciprocal measure, after suspending it in early 2020 to prevent the coronavirus from spreading.
Taiwan, Japan and Macao have recently allowed South Korean nationals to enter without visas.
Health authorities warned of risks associated with the emergence of new variants of the coronavirus ahead of a possible winter surge.
In the second week of October, the BA.5 variant declined at a gradual clip to take up 89.3 percent of the total new infections, while some new variants, such as BF. 7 and BA.2.75, inched up to 1.8 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively.
The KDCA said the BF.7 variant has been confirmed in around 14,000 cases from 67 countries, including Germany and France.
It also said the new variants called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, which are now rapidly spreading in the United States, could become dominant variants in South Korea in the coming months.
(Yonhap)
