Despite the easing of quarantine measures following the de facto endemic (periodic outbreak of infectious diseases) declaration, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases appears to be decreasing.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) announced on the 21st that the weekly new confirmed cases for the second week of June (11th?17th) decreased by 3.4% compared to the previous week, totaling 113,160 cases, with a daily average of 16,166 cases. This marks the fourth consecutive week of decline since the third week of May.
The 'effective reproduction number,' which indicates how many people one infected person transmits the virus to, was 0.98, remaining below 1, which signifies epidemic suppression, for four consecutive weeks.
The average daily number of critically ill patients hospitalized was 113, down 11.7% from the previous week. However, the number of new deaths was 72 (a daily average of 10), representing a 26.3% increase from the prior week.
The nationwide intensive care unit (ICU) bed occupancy rate was 27.2%, slightly down from 28.5% the previous week.
The weekly COVID-19 risk level has remained 'low' for 22 consecutive weeks since the third week of January.
Since this month, health authorities have downgraded the COVID-19 infectious disease crisis alert level from 'serious' to 'caution' and lifted the isolation requirement for confirmed cases as well as the mask-wearing mandate at clinics and pharmacies.
Meanwhile, among COVID-19 variants, the detection rate of XBB.1.9.1 rose by 1.2 percentage points from the previous week to 25.9%, making it the most prevalent Omicron sublineage. The detection rate of XBB.1.9.2, the second most prevalent, decreased from 21.1% to 19.7%. XBB.1.5 was recorded at 13.3%, down 2.1 percentage points from the previous week.
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