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Minister Kwon Visits Joint Situation Room in Seoul Area

- Visit to Joint Situation Room in Seoul Area and Modular Negative-Pressure Clinical Ward of National Medical Center (December 25) -

As part of his first field inspection after inauguration, Minister Kwon Deok-cheol visited the joint situation room in the Seoul area on December 25 and encouraged medical personnel.

The visit was made immediately after the minister’s inauguration in order to inspect the coronavirus situation and response in the Seoul area and encourage medical personnel and staff.

A joint situation room was installed at National Medical Center, a central hospital for infectious diseases*, in August 2020 when the number of COVID-19 cases rose significantly in the Seoul area, with the purpose of reducing the number of patients waiting for a bed.

* Functions include treatment and examination of patients with infectious diseases, training and education of responses to infectious diseases, clinical research on novel and high-risk infectious diseases, management and evaluation of resources to respond to infectious diseases, and operation of patient referral and return system.

The joint situation room is responsible for supervising and coordinating integrated classification of patients in the Seoul area and joint use of medical resources including beds and community treatment centers to prevent any lack in medical services due to administrative district boundaries and to provide the best treatment when the number of positive cases rapidly rises.

In response to the recent spike in the number of patients in the Seoul area, the joint situation room was granted the exclusive authority to allocate available beds and added medical personnel exclusively responsible for COVID-19*, resulting in the capability of allocating about 1,000 patients on a daily basis.

* The number of exclusive medical personnel including public health doctors increased from 30 to 55 from the Central Disaster Management Headquarters, National Medical Center, and local governments (Seoul, Gyeonggi, Incheon).

Since its opening in August 2020, the joint situation room has allocated beds for more than 25,000 COVID-19 patients, and the number of patients on the waiting list decreased from 496 as of December 18 to 185 as of December 24.