South Korea hits daily record 400,000-plus virus cases

SOUTH KOREA,US: South Korea reported more than 400,000 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, a new record, as the country continues to ease restrictions despite the Omicron-fueled wave of infections.

Health authorities said 400,741 cases were recorded, the country’s highest daily figure since the pandemic began two years ago.

The latest spike in cases is the “last biggest challenge” facing the country, Sohn Young-rae, a senior health official, told a press briefing.

The government had anticipated caseloads in this ballpark, he said, adding that they believed they were nearing the peak of the Omicron wave.

“If we overcome this crisis we will step closer to returning to normalcy,” he added.

South Korea leads the world in newly reported cases in the last seven days, according to WHO data, with 2,358,878 cases, followed by Vietnam with 1,795,380.

The vast majority of South Korea’s eligible population has been vaccinated and boosted, and despite the record number of infections in the country of 52 million people, death rates remain very low.

Meanwhile, A fourth dose of existing mRNA Covid-19 vaccines may have only “marginal benefits” for younger, healthy adults, according to a new Israeli study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The research assessed 270 health care workers at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv who received a second booster shot of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, four months after initially getting three Pfizer shots.

Each was age-matched against two participants in a control group that had received only three doses of Pfizer, with the median ages in the groups ranging from mid-fifties to early sixties.

Overall, the fourth shot was found to be safe, and topped up recipients’ neutralizing antibodies — which block the coronavirus from infecting cells — to levels comparable to just after the third dose, prior to when antibody levels started waning with time.

The study took place when spread of the Omicron variant was rife in Israel, and it found that the fourth dose didn’t confer much added protection against infection, despite the reduction over time of antibodies among people who’d received just three shots.

– JAPAN TODAY, NDTV