South Korea is having a very mysterious Covid outbreak

The Quarantine Zone
1

At 86% vaccinated, South Korea is one of the most-vaxxed nations in the world, yet it’s experiencing a ferocious 300,000-new-cases-per-day outbreak at the moment - an insane rate for a nation whose population is but 50 million. At that rate, the entire South Korean population would be (hypothetically) infected in a matter of months. It’s almost like the vaccines are doing no good.

(Note that I’m not saying vaccines are useless, I’m just saying that for an 86% vaccinated nation, herd immunity sure seems to have taken a hike.)

2

Got a link?

I’m hearing that New Zealand, which has spent a lot of the past 2 years in quarantine, is also seeing its own COVID surge.

3

I added a NY Times link in my OP.

It’s truly a mystery. Korea’s rate of mask-compliance, vaccine-compliance can’t possibly be worse than America’s but America is doing much better at the moment.

4

It looks like Omicron is just hitting South Korea now. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s what is happening with NZ as well.

5

My wife, a Korean citizen, has family in South Korea of course. Her grandmother, who’s in her 90s, just tested positive for it, has no symptoms, and was already fully vaccinated for COVID-19. Grandma’s required to isolate at home for seven says. The most likely place of infection was her part-time job where she works with other very senior citizens.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the wife’s brother, a detective, was investigating a murder. He, along with the other detectives on scene and the CSI folks, all had to isolate for a week due to testing postive for COVID-19 after investigating the scene.

6

80+% vaccinated, but how many have gotten booster shots? It been pretty clearly established that 2 doses offer minimal protection against infection, though it does better against severe illness/hospitalization.

7

We, NZ, have spent most of the last 2 years NOT in quarantine (quarantined from the world perhaps, but that’s ok by me). What has happened here is that omicron is too infectious for the inbound quarantine to work so now COVID has finally got in and is making its way through the country.

8

The vaccines developed against the 2020 varieties of COVID won’t stop Omicron transmission cold. However, that doesn’t mean the vaccines aren’t doing any good in South Korea.

Today’s seven-day average of COVID deaths in South Korea is 206. Working backwards two weeks to account for the lag between COVID cases and outcomes, South Korea had 147,427 on 2/27/2022.

The U.S. has gone over a COVID-case seven-day average of 140,000 three times – with the winter 2020-21 surge, the Delta surge, and the Omicron surge. I have picked out the dates when 140,000 was surpassed on the upward-moving trendlines with each surge, then added two weeks to see how death trailed compared to what South Korea is experiencing now. The raw numbers tell the tale (all numbers below are from the respective charts for S Korea and the US on Worldometers):

S Korea

Cases (7-day avg)
2/26/2022 - 139,039
2/27/2022 - 147,427

Deaths (7-day avg)
3/12/2022 - 192
3/13/2022 - 206

USA

Winter 2020-21 surge:

Cases (7-day avg)
11/12/2021 - 139,378
11/14/2021 - 150,855

Deaths (7-day avg)
11/28/2020 - 1,856
11/30/2020 - 1,792

Delta surge:

Cases (7-day avg)
8/16/2021 - 137,849
8/17/2021 - 140,209

Deaths (7-day avg)
8/30/2021 - 1,626
8/31/2021 - 1,652

Omicron surge:

Cases (7-day avg)
12/18/2021 - 136,810
12/19/2022 - 143,306

Deaths (7-day avg)
1/1/2022 - 1,326
1/2/2022 - 1,357

9

  1. Omicon (and to a somewhat lesser degree, Delta before it) is notoriously able to cause breakthrough infections among the vaccinated.

  2. But, in most cases, the vaccinations (especially if a booster was also given) were pretty danged good at preventing serious illness, hospitalization, and death. In the U.S., roughly 3/4 of the people who got seriously ill from Omicron were unvaccinated, and the unvaccinated were 20 times more likely to die from Omicron than the vaccinated were.

10

Are they simply just testing more? I know they were very high on testing early on.

11

Exactly. When omnicrom hit here, it came faster than we could test, so we stopped testing and just assumed everyone had likely been exposed.

Part of S Korea’s early success is because they tested relentlessly. And it seems they still are, which would explain these numbers.

Once it hit, instead of reporting infection rates, the focus shifted to counting hospitalizations. Since high vaxxing meant many or most, new infections would not result in hospitalization, that became a better metric. It sounds like they haven’t made that shift and are still tallying infection rates.

12

I read where China is also having a surge. This virus is a Nightmare on Elm Street.

13

Are you serious? The mortality rate for Covid patients who are vaccinated is far less than 10% that for the unvaccinated. The morbidity rate is reduced tremendously too.

14

Quick look at Canada, South Korea, and the USA. Canada and S.Korea have high vaccination rates but Canada did a poor job with track and trace. The US is added just for context.

You can see the case rate skyrocket in South Korea but notice the effectively flat rate up until now. Even so, death rates from covid are only now hitting US levels. Big question will be around how damaging to health care the surge will be.

15

According to ourworldindata, their ICU patients are still low.

16

Did they have the Omicron surge at the same time we did, and they’re having another one?

Or is this some sort of delayed thing where we had ours a month or two ago, and they’re just now having it?

17

I mean, even if they were having their surge for the first time, this shows that the vaccine is very weak against prevention infection/transmission.

It seems to be great against preventing severe symptoms or death. But it sure isn’t preventing outbreaks from happening with gusto.

18

Welcome to late 2021.

19

Well, yeah, and that’s exactly what the world has learned about these new variants over the past six months.

20

This was the great hope of what the vaccine would be able to do, reduce mortality and morbidity. It’s almost miraculous that it’s been so effective in doing that. Any ability of the vaccine to prevent infection altogether would have been icing on the cake. And it has shown some ability in that area, just not as much as we all would like.