Experience of augmenting critical care capacity in Daegu during COVID-19 incident in South Korea

Abstract

South Korea confirmed its first case of Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) on January 20, 2020. Starting from the outbreak of confirmed cases at a religious group in Daegu on February 18, 2020, the accumulated number of confirmed cases spiked from three digits to four between February 26 and April 3, 2020. The death rate continued to rise since the first reported death on February 20, 2020. The number of newly confirmed case per day has declined since hitting a record high of 909 on February 29, dropping to less than 10 since May 4. As of May 15, 2020, the overall death rate of COVID-19 in South Korea is 2.36%, with 74.8% of the total confirmed cases and 89.6% of deaths occurring in Daegu and Gyeongsangbuk-do [1]. The regional bias of the entire confirmed and deceased was difficult to handle with medical resources in Daegu and Gyeongsangbuk-do, and it is believed that there would have been greater difficulties in intensive care, especially for critically ill patients. The Korean Society of Critical Care Medicine (KSCCM) has formed a task force team (TFT) since March 2 and began discussing measures for critical care, following the increase in the number of patients with COVID-19. According to a report of China [2], one of the main risk factors of COVID-19-related deaths is old age, and the median time from symptoms onset to intensive care unit (ICU) admission was 10.5 days. In South Korea, 19.1% of all confirmed cases were patients aged 60 or older on March 1, and considering the situation in which the daily number of newly confirmed cases showed the highest on February 29, the number of serious patients could be predicted to increase sharply around March 10. The KSCCM judged that a rapid increase in the number of critically ill patients in Daegu and Gyeongsangbuk-do would be difficult for local medical institutions to care for them. To establish a system for transferring and treat critically ill patients to other regions, KSCCM started to identify available ICU beds for COVID-19 critically ill patients and contact and discuss with the relevant government authorities [3].