Sangmi Cha

SEOUL (Reuters). South Korea encouraged citizens to get COVID-19 booster shots Wednesday as more elderly people fell ill. This led to a significant increase in serious and critically ill cases.

According to official data, the number of serious coronavirus cases rose dramatically from the low-300s in Oct to as high as 460 Wednesday. More than 82% of severely ill patients were older than 60.

Son Young-rae, a top official from the Health Ministry, stated at a press conference that the rise in ICU beds isn’t threatening the country’s health system.

According to him, it is important to take into account the rate of rise in serious cases as well as the number of infections among unvaccinated people when deciding how to respond to healthcare.

South Korea continues to have a low rate of vaccine breakout infections at 8.5 people for every 100,000 immunized.

It has been steadily rising in the recent weeks due to the elderly as their immunity system weakens and vaccine protection wanes.

The government reported that 93% of all the serious and critically ill patients infected by vaccine breakthroughs over the past 8 weeks were aged 60 or older.

Since last month’s start of the vaccination program, 642,232 people have been inoculated with booster shots. The majority of these vaccines were provided by Pfizer/BioNTech. Moderna (NASDAQ:)

South Korea began a gradual lifting of COVID-19 regulations this month. It has vaccinated almost 90% of its adult population (77% of the 52 million)

Although authorities stated that there will be a circuit breaker issued in the event of a significant strain on hospital beds for serious patients, the precise threshold has not been revealed.

For Tuesday, the country recorded 2,425 additional cases. There have been 385831 cases of infection and 312 deaths.