Seoul court on Friday afternoon has suspended the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s forthcoming policy requiring kids as young as 12 to be fully vaccinated or tested to access public spaces until a further decision is made. It also suspended the requirement for those entering large stores to have proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test. The requirement for minors was to begin taking ...

When the inevitable omicron explosion descends on South Korea, the kind of restrictive approach to dealing with the virus will have run its course, top officials say. In a news briefing Friday, the Health and Economy ministries said Korea will focus on keeping its businesses and other aspects of daily life as open as possible once the new variant starts dominating the scene. The characteristics...

Kang Soon-won, a head nurse overseeing the hospital’s remote monitoring program, said that at-home patients who develop worrying signs like persistent fevers or low blood oxygen levels can be brought in for an outpatient appointment. Last month, each nurse was having to check in on 100 or more patients. “That means one nurse was making 300 phone calls a day. Now we are seeing a third of that,” s...

Omicron may spell the beginning of the end of the pandemic, a leading infectious disease doctor at South Korea’s top national hospital said Wednesday. Dr. Oh Myoung-don, who heads the National Medical Center‘s committee for clinical management of emerging infectious diseases, told a news conference Wednesday, “Omicron is a distinctly different virus from the coronavirus as we know it. COVID-22, ...

A progressive lawyers’ group Tuesday slammed an anti-corruption investigative agency established by President Moon Jae-in administration over alleged spying on South Koreans. Lawyers for a Democratic Society, more widely known by the Korean acronym Minbyun, held a round-table talk with civic groups to address recent allegations of communications surveillance by the Corruption Investigation Offic...

To deal with a possible testing crisis driven by an omicron surge, South Korea says it would give people at higher risk PCR tests first, while lower priority people take at-home rapid antigen tests. The Ministry of Health and Welfare said the country’s COVID-19 diagnosis system, which so far has only used the highly accurate PCR tests, may start using the rapid antigen tests for less urgent case...

Korea’s new policy requiring people to be completely vaccinated or cleared in tests to enter public places is stirring up a wave of protests and court challenges. On Saturday civic groups and local community organizations marched from Seoul Station to Gwanghwamun Square demanding that the compulsory vaccine-or-testing policy be scrapped. The Saturday rally, among the firsts of many that is being...

South Korea has bought an additional 400,000 courses of Paxlovid, the COVID-19 antiviral pills developed by Pfizer, health officials said Wednesday evening. With the latest purchase, the country has secured enough oral treatments for 1 million people in total -- Pfizer’s for 762,000 people, and the rest from Merck. “Adding pills to our treatment protocol will help stabilize and expand the at-hom...

The mandatory vaccine pass continues to fan controversy, with legal and health authorities clashing over its necessity at some places and possible rights violations. Legal experts say the mandatory vaccine pass, among other disease control policies, raises points of constitutional contention that stretch beyond the realm of public health and science. Health authorities on the other hand say the ...

A Seoul court on Tuesday afternoon temporarily blocked the vaccine pass mandate at educational facilities, saying the policy “seriously disadvantages people who are not vaccinated.” Seoul’s administrative court has granted local community groups’ request for an injunction against the Ministry of Health and Welfare mandate requiring people to present proof of full vaccination or a recently taken ...

South Korea is considering whether to distribute a fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to some vulnerable populations now that the booster vaccination program is well underway for people aged 18 and over. Ministry of Health and Welfare spokesperson Son Young-rae said in a news briefing Tuesday whether to distribute fourth doses in the coming months was being discussed within the ministry and oth...

As the third year of the pandemic dawns, the rise of a new variant once again upends previously established calculations about the virus. Forecasts out there are a mix of bleak and upbeat, with the most optimistic saying omicron could be “the beginning of the end.” Although it’s still too early to predict omicron’s impact, most experts agree on one point: This winter will be a challenge with an...

With vaccines aplenty and new therapies on the way, South Korea envisions to have less social distancing and more freedom in 2022. In a news briefing Thursday, Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Yoo Geun-heag said with the rise of the omicron variant, “when the pandemic will come to an end has become more unpredictable than ever.” Still, Korea will “strive to make headway toward normalcy carefu...

A slimmer cochlear implant device design and its early activation are likely to lead to better hearing in cochlear implant patients, according to professor Choi Byung-Yoon, an otorhinolaryngology specialist. Cochlear implants, which remains the only way to restore hearing for people with severe to profound deafness, work by translating sound into electrical signals that can be registered by audi...

Top health officials say COVID-19 cases in are finally slowing in South Korea after bed shortages and increasing out-of-hospital deaths forced “return-to-normal” plans to halt two weeks ago. Despite the reassurance, the highly transmissible omicron variant is spreading while hospital admissions continue a record-setting rise. Son Young-rae, spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Welfare, to...