New virus cases with unknown infection routes, coupled with the pace of virus spread in South Korea, are emerging as major challenges in the country's fight to curb nationwide outbreaks.
The country's daily new virus cases have been in the triple digits for 11 consecutive days. What is worrisome is that the number of untraceable virus cases has been piling up at alarming rates, further complicating health authorities' efforts to trace and isolate potential cases.
South Korea reported 397 coronavirus cases, the highest total in more than five months, on Sunday. The number of additional new coronavirus cases sharply slowed to below 300 on Monday, but the country is still bogged down with a series of cluster infections continuing in the greater Seoul area and other major cities.
Jeong Eun-kyeong, the director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), has said that the peak has yet to come citing the large number of cases with unknown infection routes as a major risk factor.
"Investigation into these cases could lead to confirmation of other cluster infections, so I would say the epidemic is still at a critical situation, and we expect the number of confirmed patients to continue to increase for a while," she said in a daily briefing on Sunday.
The number of patients with unknown infection routes came to 451 from Aug. 9-22, or 18.5 percent of the total 2,440 cases confirmed during the cited period, according to the KCDC.
The number is up from 8.3 percent recorded in the previous two weeks, when 39 of the 470 newly confirmed COVID-19 patients had unknown transmission routes.
In the past week alone, an average of 268.4 daily cases was reported, and the ratio of untraceable cases reached 20.2 percent.
Health authorities said it is a sign that control over the virus spread may be tougher than before.
The spike in the number of elderly patients is another source of concern as they are more vulnerable to the new virus.
Of the patients identified in the past two weeks, 773, or 32 percent, were aged 65 or older. The number of COVID-19 patients in critical condition also rose by two to 32 on Monday.
Since Aug. 14, the country has witnessed spiking cases in the greater Seoul area, mostly traced to a conservative protestant church in Seoul and an anti-government march on the Aug. 15 Liberation Day.
Over the past 11 days, a whopping 2,893 new cases were identified across the nation.
The latest uptick in the number of new infections has been ringing an alarm bell as they were mostly reported from Seoul and its surrounding Gyeonggi Province, home to half of the country's 51 million people.
With all of South Korea placed under Level 2 in the three-tier social distancing system now, health authorities said they will be forced to consider raising it to the highest notch unless the spread of the virus is contained this week.
"We are currently facing a serious situation on the verge of a large-scale nationwide pandemic," Jeong said, urging citizens to stay home and follow the social distancing guidelines. (Yonhap)