South Korea opens up, despite record explosion of Covid-19 infections

A healthcare worker in a cubicle prepares to take a nasal swab sample from a man at a makeshift testing site in Seoul, South Korea.

AP - Ahn Young-joon

Text by: RFI Follow

3 mins

More than 600,000 new infections were recorded this Thursday, March 17, an absolute record for the "Land of the Morning Calm" and its 52 million inhabitants.

However, the government does not seem to be alarmed and still plans to gradually end the restrictions.

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With our correspondent in Seoul,

The strategy is surprising, in this region of the world rather known for having implemented extremely strict measures in the face of the virus.

But it is when the cases are at their highest that we come closest to a pre-Covid situation.

If the restaurants and shopping streets are not full, people continue to go out in Seoul: the atmosphere has nothing to do with the feeling of panic and the collective anxiety of winter 2021, when the subways were empty with only a few thousand cases of contamination recorded.

If certain criticisms are heard, particularly within the scientific community, it is above all fatigue in the face of Covid-19 and its restrictions which seems to dominate among South Koreans.

► To read also: End of the “zero Covid” strategy in South Korea, the country intends to live with the virus

On the government side, the vaccine pass has been removed and further easing of restrictions was announced this Friday, March 18, with the authorization of gatherings of up to eight people, against six previously.

The opening hours of restaurants and bars could also soon go from 11 p.m. to midnight.

As a sign of this desire to reopen, the sacrosanct quarantine at the entrance to the country, currently seven days, will be lifted on March 21 for people vaccinated in South Korea and on April 1 for people with a complete vaccination course in the stranger.

South Korea, an exception in East Asia

Compared to its neighbours, South Korea is an exception.

North Korea is locked down,

and Taiwan continues to have only a handful of cases with a very restrictive entry policy.

is preparing to lift all restrictions related to Covid-19

.

But while the peak of the Omicron wave seems to have passed and daily cases have fallen back below 100,000, the country continues to have much tighter border control than its Korean neighbor.

► To read also: Covid-19: rebound of the pandemic in Asia as health measures are relaxed

To understand this openness strategy of South Korea, we must first put into perspective the impressive figure of 621,000 cases this Thursday, March 17, partly due to an accounting error in the previous days.

The average of new cases published by the South Korean authorities over the past week is 390,000 cases.

A figure, certainly, high, but which is part of the strategy to fight against the virus, because the country continues to screen massively to identify cases at risk and to be able to treat them.

The result is clear: in South Korea, people die less of the virus than elsewhere.

With a death rate of 0.14%, 10 times lower than in the United States, South Korea remains a good student compared to countries with a similar population, with 12,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic against 138. 000 in France or 163,000 in the United Kingdom.

Faced with Omicron and

, the South Korean hospital continues to withstand the shock, avoiding saturation of intensive care beds.

The health system has adapted rather well to the abandonment of the tracing of contact cases and the passage from the systematic isolation of patients under strict surveillance, to the fortnight at home.

Often presented as a model for managing the pandemic, variant after variant, South Korea continues to prove its ability to adapt.

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• South Korea

• Coronavirus

• Health and medicine