South Korea reports record number 600,000 COVID-19 cases

South Korea reported a record of more than 600,000 coronavirus cases on Thursday.

According to WHO data, South Korea leads the world in newly reported cases in the last seven days with 2,417,174 infections, followed by Vietnam with 1,776,045.

The 621,328 cases recorded Thursday is South Korea’s highest daily figure since the pandemic began. Official data shows that critical cases and deaths remain comparatively low in the country of around 52 million where the majority of adults are fully vaccinated and have received a booster shot.

“We have been preparing for an increase in the number of patients since Omicron became dominant,” Lee Sang-won, a senior official at the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said Thursday.

The South Korean government have conceded that their modelling did not anticipate the case load to be this high. “The number is much greater than what was expected,” Sang-Won said

Health authorities believe South Korea is nearing the peak of an Omicron-driven wave, but Lee said they were recalculating “the scale of the confirmed cases or how long the ‘peak period’ is going to last.”

Once it has passed, officials believe the country will be able to start getting back to normal. “I think this crisis will be the last major crisis in the overall response to Covid-19,” Sohn Young-Rae, a senior health ministry official, said Wednesday.

Since the pandemic began in 2020, 11,481 people have died of Covid in South Korea, according to health authorities.