“Adults who have not yet been infected with Covid-19 are those who have interpersonal problems,” Ma Sang-hyuk, vice president of the Korean Vaccine Society, wrote on Facebook. He reportedly deleted the March 16 post after the reactions before saying that the remark was merely metaphorical and that there was a misunderstanding. In an interview with the South Korean news website Daily, he said: “He stressed how difficult it is for anyone to avoid the virus in a situation where there is a high rate of confirmed cases in the region.” A traveler arrives at a Covid-19 test center at Incheon International Airport in Incheon (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) The day the doctor made his comments, South Korea recorded 400,741 new cases of Covid, while the Korean Disease Control and Prevention Service (KCDA) warned that the Omicron variant was leading the record wave of infections. Despite the numbers, the government shows no signs of reconsidering plans to lift almost all social distance restrictions in the coming days and weeks, and public opinion seems to support these moves. Nearly 63 percent of the country’s 52 million people had been vaccinated, with 86.6 percent of the population fully vaccinated, the KDCA reported. People receive the first dose of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for coronavirus COVID-19 at a vaccination center in Seoul (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) A government analysis of about 141,000 Omicron cases reported in the country last year showed no deaths in people under the age of 60 who received the booster vaccine, said Son Young-rae, a health ministry official, adding that Covid may be treated like seasonal flu. “We see that this could be the last major crisis in our responses to Covid and if we overcome this crisis, it will bring us closer to normal lives,” Mr Young-rae said in a statement.
