Cold weather warnings have been issued across the country. Respiratory infectious diseases such as the flu are spreading, making it worse. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided on the 16th to maintain the current "warning" level of the COVID-19 crisis warning level.

Korea's infectious disease crisis warning system consists of four stages: "severe, alert, attention, attention." The government decided not to lower the level as it judged that the current spread of infectious diseases is not unusual. Therefore, masks are mandatory in hospitals as usual.

Nowadays, many hospitals and clinics are suffering from respiratory diseases such as the flu. There is a high risk of contracting another respiratory disease at a hospital while receiving treatment without a mask. In particular, the number of flu patients is increasing rapidly. Last week, the number of flu patients was the highest in the last five years. According to the sample monitoring of suspected flu doctors (suspected) patients in two weeks in December, the number of doctors per 1,000 outpatients was 61.3, the highest in the last five years (2019-2023).

There are many children and adolescent patients, so there are a lot of students coughing at school. There is a vicious cycle of them returning home and transferring them to their families. If it gets worse, it can be worsened by pneumonia. There are still many COVID-19 patients. According to the first week of December, 6,000 to 8,000 confirmed cases have been steadily coming out over the past eight weeks, with 6,791 infected over a week.

As other respiratory diseases such as COVID-19, the lino virus, and mycoplasma pneumonia are also prevalent at the same time, there is also a pattern of a combined epidemic of infectious diseases. In addition to the flu vaccination request, the government is supplying an additional 1.25 million people in the national stockpile to prevent the shortage of antiviral drugs.

Reporter Kim Yong
ecok@kormedi.com
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