The number of daily COVID-19 cases exceeded 10,000 for the first time in 20 days. The reproduction number (R0) also surpassed 1, showing that the spread of the virus was accelerating.

In an opening comment during a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters on June 29, Lee Ki-il (second vice minister of health and welfare), the first general coordinator at the Headquarters said, “We expect the number of new daily cases of the virus to exceed 10,000 for the first time in 20 days since June 9.” He then said, “The reproduction number, which fell to 0.7 at the end of April, has continued to rise recently, reaching 1.0 yesterday.” The fact that the reproductive rate surpassed 1 means that the spread of COVID-19 is no longer declining, but is heading back up.

Lee cited the spread of variants, such as BA.4 and BA.5, and the increasing number of people traveling for the summer holidays as the common reason pushing the number of cases up. Last week (June 19-25), the BA.5 strain accounted for 7.5% of the cases confirmed in South Korea, up 5.5% from the previous week. Reportedly, in European countries like Germany, France and the United Kingdom where the variants are more prevalent, the number of COVID-19 cases have been on the rise.

Lee also said that the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters would discuss the nation’s response system in psychiatric health facilities, such as psychiatric hospitals and mental care facilities. He said, “Disease control authorities focused on reviewing the existence and operation of infection management offices and infection management committees in 233 hospital-level medical institutions to improve the capacity to control infections.”

Lee mentioned that the nation needed preemptive disease control measures now more than ever and asked related ministries and local governments to first inspect the disease control situation in facilities where mass infections frequently occurred in the past.