[kijin]

South Korean here. We're testing literally everyone who has had any sort of contact with the cult that is at the center of the recent explosion of cases. Like, if you've been attending an art class run by members of the cult, you'll get a call.

If you're unrelated to the cult but want to get tested anyway, you can just show up at a drive-thru testing center (yes, that's a thing) and it will take less than 10 minutes. On-demand testing costs around $150, but it's free if you turn out to be infected or have recently been to any place where you might have picked up the virus, such as Daegu.

This system obviously picks up a lot of mild cases.

I haven't seen the 27 "Serious or Critical" figure published anywhere domestically. It might be based on an arbitrary criterion (e.g. "patient is being given oxygen") that is only used for reporting to international organizations. Meanwhile, the government has begun to move mild cases from hospitals to other facilities (where they will be quarantined) in order to make room for more severe cases that they're clearly anticipating. There have been over 30 deaths already, so it's unlikely that there are only 27 severe cases.

[codeulike]

Thanks. I'm trying to get a handle on the 'how many people need to be hospitalised' statistic because I don't think we've got any outside-of-China stats on that, and its one of the most worrying dimensions of the outbreak.