On 22/2/2022 11:13 am, David P. wrote:
> South Korea, a Virus Success Story, Now Finds Its Model Unsustainable
> By Choe Sang-Hun, Feb. 17, 2022, NYT
>
> Critics have said the government’s new approach disadvantages
> underprivileged classes, like poor people who lack access to
> medical care or other social services.
>
> “It’s tantamount to letting the virus spread, rather than doing
> everything possible to contain its spread,” said ​Woo Seoc-kyun,
> a representative of the Association of Physicians for Humanism​,
> a nationwide doctors’ group​. “It threatens to reverse what we
> have achieved so far through a tight management of the pandemic,
> like keeping the number of fatalities low.”
>
> The government said that even if the daily caseload soared, ​it
> would still consider lifting restrictions further so that South
> Korea could switch to a “life with Covid-19,” treating the disease
> like “seasonal flu,” provided that the number of seriously ill
> patients was kept under control.
>
> Whether the government can keep up with the Omicron surge well
> enough to make such a shift is still up for debate. This week,
> the United States put South Korea on its “Do Not Travel” list.
> The number of people being treated at home surged from 150,000
> last week to 314,000 on Thursday and is expected to grow.
>
> And so, too, could the number of seriously ill.
>
> Jung Jae-hun, a professor of preventive medicine at Gachon University
> in South Korea, estimated that the daily caseload would peak at over
> 200,000 and stay at that level throughout March. Another estimate,
> by the government’s National Institute for Mathematical Sciences,
> predicted as many as 360,000 new patients a day by early next month.
>
> The authorities are preparing more hospital beds for the seriously
> ill as a precaution. They are also asking neighborhood clinics to
> pitch in to treat at-home patients remotely. Nearly half of the
> workers at government-run health clinics in Gyeonggi Province,
> which surrounds Seoul, called for an immediate relief from the
> “extreme stress” caused by a crushing workload, according to a
> recent survey.
>
> Last week, South Korea retired its GPS monitoring tool used to
> enforce isolation — a smartphone app that alerted health workers
> when patients left home without permission. Many of the 60,000
> workers who monitored those movements on the app will be now
> redeployed to assist vulnerable patients at home, delivering
> medicine and manning hotlines.
>
> “There has been a bottleneck in putting calls through, as we were
> trying to handle a sudden spike in patients,” said Lee Ki-il, a
> senior disease-control coordinator.
>
> The government’s ​changing attitude was not solely influenced by
> data. An increasingly impatient public​ has also become more vocal
> about the need for a new approach.
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/world/asia/south-korea-covid-spread.html

A lot of countries are relaxing and even abandoning their control
management and now working to even not to use mask, is going to face a
surge in their community and country, too. Make no mistake, the surge
will increase in these countries which practice easy going policies on
the virus.If not careful, they will end in misery.