[Square] What Remains for Us After the Era of Quarantine

Song Gwan-yeong, Director of Seoul Medical Center

It has been two years since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 occurred in South Korea on January 20, 2020. Our society has made every effort to overcome the turbulent waves of COVID-19. Having experienced vaccination during the MERS outbreak and started responding to COVID-19 early, South Korea established an organic quarantine system among public healthcare, local medical communities, local governments, and the central government with the cooperation of the entire population. This enabled the country to rise as one of the world’s leading nations in COVID-19 response and achieve outstanding quarantine results.

Seoul Medical Center, as a central pillar of the quarantine system, was designated as a dedicated COVID-19 hospital from the onset of the outbreak and has fought with everything on the front lines of treating confirmed patients. Over the past two years, through the main hospital, Gangnam branch, KEPCO, and Taereung residential treatment centers, it has treated more than 25,000 COVID-19 patients. Nevertheless, the much-desired and longed-for goal of ‘ending COVID-19’ has become an unrealistic objective, and we are now entering a phase of phased daily recovery (With COVID) and preparing for long COVID. While With COVID essentially depends on social consensus and our mindset, the real issue is long COVID. The pain and damage caused by post-COVID symptoms lasting from as short as two weeks to several months are significant, and the number of people complaining of these symptoms is rapidly increasing. Initially hidden, the symptoms and incidence rates are becoming clearer and more specific, with current estimates indicating that about 20% of all confirmed cases suffer from long COVID, and the actual number is likely much higher.

Fortunately, our medical community is actively preparing for long COVID just as it has responded to COVID-19 so far. Primary care is provided at private clinics, patients requiring more intensive observation are treated at public hospitals, and local governments and public health centers collaborate to ensure smooth cooperation and linkage management. This long COVID response system will be an effective solution for the many patients suffering from post-COVID symptoms.

Although everything has been devoted to responding to COVID-19, dedicated public hospitals for COVID-19 will soon face the challenge of restoring their pre-COVID operational status once the response ends. In the case of Seoul Medical Center, a public hospital under the Seoul Metropolitan Government, it must increase the number of appropriate users during normal times to cover its operating costs and achieve both public healthcare and hospital management. Preparing for new infectious disease disasters that may arise after COVID-19 is another challenge. Infectious disease disasters like SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 tend to occur in cycles of about every five years, and since COVID-19 has already taken away two and a half years, the time left before the next infectious disease disaster may be only about two years.

Considering the national damage caused by COVID-19, no amount of investment in preparing for future infectious disease disasters can be considered excessive. It is urgent to build large-scale infrastructure capable of exclusively treating infectious disease patients and to establish a more efficient and advanced communication system among the government, local governments, public healthcare institutions, and local medical communities. In particular, a central control tower that continuously collects and reflects voices from the field and links responsive measures accordingly is desperately needed.

While COVID-19 could be excused as unpredictable, there can be no excuse for lack of preparation for future infectious disease disasters. We must use the experience of COVID-19 as a vaccine to prevent the next infectious disease disaster. The numbers on the COVID-19 dashboard continuously warn us that there is no time and no other way than for us to find the most effective measures ourselves.

/ Song Gwan-young, Director of Seoul Medical Center