Daily COVID Deaths to Peak in 2 Weeks

Korea's daily coronavirus death toll has remained above 300 for five days now. They soared to 429 on March 17 but then dropped to 301 the next day and continued to increase to 329 as of Monday morning.

The number of infections decreased to 209,169 on Monday morning while severe cases stood at 1,130. But given that critical cases and deaths lag about two weeks behind the infection curve, they will likely keep rising, putting more pressure for medical facilities.

Experts warn that critically cases that could lead to more deaths will peak in late March or early April and that death numbers could reach 400 to 500 a day.

The Ministry of Food and Drug Safety is reviewing an urgent approval request for Merck's COVID treatment Molnupiravir because Korea is already running out of Pfizer's Paxlovid pills.

Now the cumulative total of infections has reached 9.58 million. Considering the average daily number of around 400,000 due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant, they will probably exceed 10 million by Tuesday, or one out of five people in the country.