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Today (18th), the number of new corona cases is expected to reach 100,000.

The number of patients with severe severe cases, which had not increased significantly in the meantime, also surged to close to 400.

The government is announcing a new social distancing today, and is sticking with extending business hours by one hour. 



Reporter Jeong Da-eun reports.



<Reporter> The



government predicted on the 7th that 'up to 170,000 confirmed cases per day by the end of this month'.



A faster-than-expected explosion, with 90,000 people staying for two days in a row, they are sparing their words.



[Lim Sook-young / Head of the Central Quarantine Countermeasures Headquarters situation: The uncertainty about the peak of the epidemic is very high, so it is difficult to determine the exact timing or the exact size.



] A great prospect came from academia.



[Sim Eun-ha / Professor of Mathematics, Soongsil University: In Korea, it took 7 weeks for Omicron to become a dominant species, so I am guessing that it will take similarly to the peak…

.]



The sharp increase in the number of confirmed cases is leading to an increase in the number of patients with severe cases.



The number increased by 76 in one day to 389, the highest number in three weeks.



The government was confident that it could handle up to 2,000 seriously ill patients, saying that only 28.5% of the critically ill beds were occupied.



Ahead of today's announcement of the distance adjustment plan, he emphasized that seriousness, death, and management of the medical system are more important than the number of confirmed cases.



At the meeting of the Daily Recovery Support Association, let's solve it immediately, and let's keep it for a while, the two opinions clashed.



A government official said in a phone call with SBS, "Private gatherings were weighted from 6 to 8 people, and business hours were until 10 pm, but now we are considering extending the business hours only to 10 pm."