<Anchor>
As of 9 pm yesterday (8th), the number of new confirmed cases has already exceeded 300,000.
The number of critically ill patients also exceeded 1,000 in two months, so the medical field is an emergency.
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 been infected.
The medical field is in emergency.
According to the government, there are 1,007 cases of severe COVID-19.
However, there are 1,640 intensive care beds 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 severe cases is 40% more than the record high of 1,151.
The government has repeatedly confident that it can manage more than 2,000 critically ill patients by current standards, but the situation 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 we make (another bed), there are no doctors or nurses to see it.] In
a situation where the demand for PCR test 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.