The Supreme Court has confirmed the not-guilty verdicts of seven doctors and nurses at Ewha Womans University Mokdong Hospital in Seoul in the case of deaths of four newborns by bacterial infection in 2017, court officials said Friday.
The government unveiled, Friday, a detailed roadmap on lifting the indoor mask mandate, cautiously predicting that it may be scrapped by the end of January at the earliest. Yet medical experts are still debating whether the country is ready to ditch the indoor mask rule, one of the last remaining COVID-19 restrictions in Korea. While some doctors viewed that masks should now be more of a personal choice, others expressed concerns that the premature lifting of the mandate may put vulnerable groups at risk.
In the wake of the deadly large-scale crowd crush in Itaewon, which has highlighted the importance of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and first aid skills, the government is expanding CPR training to teenagers and workers at youth-related facilities.
There is a 50 percent chance that humanity will face another pandemic within 20 years, according to Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The unprecedented COVID-19 crisis that has devastated the world may be beginning to ease. However, humanity still lives close to wildlife that could host pathogens of future pandemics helped along by climate change, population growth and deforestation.
The government is expected to speed up the pace of its COVID-19 exit strategy after its decision to lift all outdoor mask mandates starting Monday. The next steps are likely to range from ending the post-arrival PCR test to resuming face-to-face visits at nursing hospitals, and it is considering a step-by-step easing of the seven-day quarantine for infected patients.