SEOUL, South Korea — For the past two years, South Korea waged a
successful battle against
COVID-19 with a so-called three-T strategy: it ramped
up lab “tests” to ferret out infections, it “traced” contacts using modern
technology, and it “treated” patients by keeping them in quarantine, where they
were monitored by the government.
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But as the fast-spreading omicron variant threatens to overwhelm
the public health system, that strategy now appears unsustainable — and it may
even be pointless, South Korean officials say. Now, they are shifting the
country’s pandemic focus to a new game plan: “select and focus.”
In the past week, South Korea has begun asking patients who
test positive to simply look after themselves at home, while the country
redirects resources to those who are most vulnerable. This new approach has
unsettled people who have grown used to the government’s heavy-handed virus
intervention, and as the number of people fending for themselves at home has
surged, so have the complaints.
Some say they were not put through when they called pandemic
hotlines seeking information.
Being left alone has felt like “home abandonment” to many.
Medical supplies the government promised to deliver — such as
thermometers, oximeters, hand sanitizer and other pandemic necessities — have
failed to arrive on time.
“The government’s partially hands-off approach is a shock to
people who have dutifully followed what the government told them to do, like
wearing masks and getting vaccinated, and in return expected it to take
responsibility for protecting their lives,” said Kim Woo-joo, president of the
Korean Vaccine Society. “It could feel like a survival-of-the-fittest
situation.”
By Tuesday, the government had mobilized thousands of
neighborhood clinics to help ease the bottleneck for those seeking help at
home. Health officials have tried to reassure people that despite initial
disturbances, the recent policy shift was inevitable, compelled — and even
justified — by the omicron data.
Until last year, South Korea had never had more than 7,849 new
patients a day. But as omicron became the dominant variant, the daily caseload
soared to 93,135 on Thursday. The government expects up to 170,000 new patients
a day later this month. That is simply too many patients to provide all of them
with the same time and attention that it once did.
Fortunately, omicron has proved less dangerous than the delta
variant. Even as omicron has surged, the number of COVID-19 fatalities dropped
from the daily record of 109 on Dec. 23 to 36 on Thursday. The number of
seriously ill patients in hospitals fell from around 1,000 in mid-December to
389 on Thursday. People in their 60s and older accounted for 93% of all
fatalities.
“We must use our limited resources more effectively, focusing on
preventing high-risk patients from getting seriously ill or dying,” said Health
Minister Kwon Deok-cheol.
Under its new strategy, the government will dedicate its
monitoring efforts to high-risk patients who are staying at home — those in
their 60s and older and people with preexisting medical conditions — supplying
them with at-home treatment kits and calling twice a day to check on their
condition.
Other patients who test positive must monitor their own symptoms
at home and seek help only when their condition worsens. Health workers will no
longer call them once a day or supply food and other daily necessities, as they
did until last week. Instead, the patients’ family members are now free to go
out for essential supplies if they are vaccinated.
Critics have said the government’s new approach disadvantages
underprivileged classes, like poor people who lack access to medical care or
other social services.
“It’s tantamount to letting the virus spread, rather than doing
everything possible to contain its spread,” said Woo Seoc-kyun, a
representative of the Association of Physicians for Humanism, a nationwide
doctors’ group. “It threatens to reverse what we have achieved so far through
a tight management of the pandemic, like keeping the number of fatalities low.”
The government said that even if the daily caseload soared, it
would still consider lifting restrictions further so that South Korea could
switch to a “life with COVID-19,” treating the disease like seasonal flu,
provided that the number of seriously ill patients was kept under control.
Jung Jae-hun, a professor of preventive medicine at Gachon
University in South Korea, estimated that the daily caseload would peak at more
than 200,000 and stay at that level throughout March. Another estimate, by the
government’s National Institute for Mathematical Sciences, predicted as many as
360,000 new patients a day by early next month.
Authorities are preparing more hospital beds for the seriously
ill as a precaution. They are also asking neighborhood clinics to pitch in to
treat at-home patients remotely. Nearly half of the workers at government-run
health clinics in Gyeonggi province, which surrounds Seoul, called for an
immediate relief from the “extreme stress” caused by a crushing workload,
according to a recent survey.
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