The government projects the number of new daily COVID-19 infections to fall below 40-thousand in May, while also predicting that the number of critically ill patients will fall below five-hundred in the next two weeks.

The projection comes as the Central Disease Control Headquarters on Tuesday announced the nationwide COVID-19 risk assessment for the previous week, which saw a downgrade from “high” to “medium” as the number of new infections continued to decline in the past five weeks.

Lee Sang-won, head of the epidemiological investigations team at the headquarters, said the number of new patients is dropping by over 30 percent every week, and the trend is expected to continue for some time. He warned, however, that the trend may stop in one or two months and the situation may plateau.

Authorities also cautioned that the number of hospitalized patients could rise again due to various risks, such as the reduced efficacy of vaccines and the emergence of new variants.