Seoul: On Wednesday, South Korea urged individuals to get COVID-19 booster doses after more elderly people were unwell and reported vaccine breakthrough infections, pushing serious and critical cases to new highs.
Official statistics revealed that severe coronavirus cases increased from the mid-300s in October to 460 on Wednesday. The total rate of vaccination breakthrough infections in South Korea is still low, at 85.5 persons per 100,000 vaccinated. However, it has progressively increased in recent weeks, headed by the elderly, as vaccination protection wears off over time and their weakened immune systems render them more susceptible to diseases.
According to official data, 93 percent of severe and critical patients with vaccination breakthrough infections in the previous eight weeks were aged 60 and more. Since the campaign began last month, the country has immunised 640,232 individuals with a booster injection, mostly utilising vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. Authorities have stated that a circuit breaker will be activated if there is a significant pressure on the number of hospital beds available to treat critical illnesses, but they have not specified what that threshold will be. For Tuesday, the country recorded 2,425 new cases. So far, 385,831 illnesses have been documented, with 3,012 fatalities.