<Anchor>
Here is the Corona news.
Today (9th), the presidential election day, the number of new corona cases surpassed 300,000, and it is expected to record a record high.
The cumulative number of patients has exceeded 5.1 million, indicating that 1 in 10 Koreans has been infected.
Correspondent Won Jong-jin.
<Reporter>
As of 9 o'clock last night, the number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 was 326,834, breaking the record for the highest number of confirmed cases in a day.
It has risen to 300,000 in just a week after the number of confirmed cases in the 200,000-per-day range.
The cumulative number of confirmed cases has exceeded 5.1 million, which means that 1 in 10 Koreans has had an infection.
The medical field is in emergency.
According to the government, there are 1,7 severe cases of COVID-19, but 1,640 intensive care beds are in use.
Corona was confirmed to have been cured and was excluded from the statistics of patients in critical condition, but this is because there are 633 more people who use the critically ill bed due to after-effects.
If we apply the same criteria as at the end of last year, at the time of the delta mutation epidemic, the number of patients with severe gastritis is 40% more than the record 1,151 cases.
The government has repeatedly been confident that it can manage more than 2,000 critically ill patients based on current standards, but the situation in the field is not favorable.
[General Hospital Doctor: Actually, the number of patients with severe gastritis is increasing a lot.
It's a situation in which (bed) can fill up in just a few days.
Even if they make (another hospital bed), there are no doctors or nurses to see it.] In
a situation where the demand for PCR tests as well as the demand for hospital beds is greatly increasing, the government is preparing for the 'professional' rapid antigen test conducted at hospitals and clinics starting next week. When this occurs, we plan to immediately recognize it as confirmed without PCR testing.