Amid the Covid-19 winter resurgence trend, mathematicians predicted an increase in daily Covid-19 cases for the next two weeks. Some even forecast that the number could exceed 100,000.
A team at the National Institute for Mathematical Science (NIMS) concluded that Covid-19 cases will surpass 100,000 on Dec. 29 after considering the amount of movement of citizens aggregated from KT mobile communication location data, and the cumulative number of confirmed cases by province from Nov. 30 to Wednesday.
Other mathematician teams also forecast that daily Covid-19 cases will increase significantly.
Professor Shim Eun-ha’s team at Soongsil University predicted that the number of new confirmed cases would increase to 101,629 on Dec. 21, and then reach 120,234 on Dec.28.
On Thursday, Korea added 70,154 new Covid-19 infections, including 38 cases from abroad, bringing the total caseload to 27,995,726, according to the KDCA.
The nation also reported 58 more Covid-19 deaths, raising the death toll to 31,232. The fatality rate stood at 0.11 percent. The number of critically ill patients came to 465, up two from the previous day.
Health experts stressed that the increasing trend of Covid-19 cases will likely affect the government’s ongoing discussion on whether to lift the indoor face mask mandate, scheduled to be announced on Dec. 23.
Adding to the government’s woes, the winter booster vaccination rate remains low.
As the number of confirmed cases increased due to the resurgence of Corona 19 in the winter, the government has been operating an intensive vaccination period from Nov. 21 to protect high-risk groups such as those over the age of 60 and those living in facilities vulnerable to infection.
The intensive vaccination period was originally scheduled to end on Sunday, but the government extended the period by another two weeks until Dec. 31 and expanded the eligibility of the vaccine to general adults over the age of 18.
Despite such efforts, the Covid-19 Vaccination Response Promotion Team said that the cumulative vaccination rate during the winter season as of Thursday was 26.2 percent for those over the age of 60 and 42.3 percent for facilities vulnerable to infection.
Notably, the high-risk group vaccination rate is still far below the government target of reaching 50 percent by the end of the year, with only 10.3 percent of the group completing vaccination.
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