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| A government official surveying a coronavirus vaccine center in Sadang, Seoul, ahead of planned vaccine inoculations on April 1, Thursday. Yonhap |
By Bahk Eun-ji
Health authorities remain vigilant against a possible uptick in cases of COVID-19 variants, as the nation's total virus caseload has topped 100,000, just three months since it exceeded 50,000.
Although the increase in the number of new cases reported daily is mainly in the greater Seoul area, the tally is expected to rise further due to sporadic cluster infections across the country.
The country added 494 more COVID-19 cases, including 471 local infections, for Thursday, raising the cumulative number of cases to 100,276, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). Seven more deaths from COVID-19 were reported, increasing the total to 1,716. The fatality rate was 1.70 percent, the KDCA said.
Concerns over a spike in new infections are looming, but in particular, a new "double mutant" variant found in India put health authorities here on alert over quarantine measures, following the launch of the national vaccination program.
While most of the coronavirus variants are more harmful, the double mutant virus is known to be more infectious. It not only spreads faster and causes severe complications, but also possibly leaves vaccines ineffective.
The vaccines against COVID-19 that have been administered in the country and around the world create neutralizing antibodies in the body, and this property blocks the virus from entering the body. However, the double mutant may be able to escape the effect of these antibodies, invalidating the effectiveness of the vaccines.
However, a research team in India reportedly said that the new double variant is not likely to be more deadly nor more inherently transmissible, but further data is needed to be sure.
"As infections in local communities keep increasing, the frequency of the variant cases is also increasing," Kwon Jun-wook, a senior health official, said in a regular virus response briefing, Friday.
As of Monday, 211 people were confirmed to have been infected with the coronavirus variant believed to have originated in the United Kingdom, followed by 30 with the South Africa variant and 8 with the Brazil variant, according to the KDCA.
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| People receive coronavirus tests at a temporary clinic in front of Seoul Station, Friday. Yonhap |
In Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, the U.K. variant was confirmed in chain infections traced to a church in the southeastern port city.
In addition to the three most-known mutations from the U.K., South Africa and Brazil, the number of other mutations is steadily increasing ― 118 people were confirmed to have been infected with the California variants of the coronavirus, including cases believed to have been found in New York, and Nigeria.
The number has increased significantly in the past 10 days, since the total number of variant cases reported was 75, on March 11.
Over in Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country faced a "very serious" situation, as the number of British variants are soaring there.
"We are now basically in a new pandemic. The British mutation has become dominant," Merkel told a news conference on Monday.
She initially proposed a lockdown, calling on citizens to stay at home for five days over the Easter Holidays to try to curb the third wave of the pandemic. But she later rescinded the plan following mounting criticism from business leaders and scientists.
Merkel still urged all Germans to get vaccinated as soon as they can.
Meanwhile in South Korea, a total of 767,451 people, including 32,456 on Wednesday, have been given COVID-19 vaccine shots up until Thursday, accounting for 1.5 percent of the country's population.
AstraZeneca's vaccine accounted for 707,481 recipients, while Pfizer's was given to 59,970 people. A total of 10,113 cases of side effects following vaccination have been reported, but most of them have turned out to be mild symptoms, such as headaches, fever and nausea.
To curb the uptick in the greater Seoul area, the government decided to extend the current social distancing scheme, the third highest in the five-tier scheme, for another two weeks, until April 11.
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