Remaining COVID-19 treatment centers and test sites nationwide will end operations beginning on Wednesday amid a continuing decline in the country's infection trend.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said that treatment centers which handle patients with mild symptoms will operate only through Tuesday.

All such facilities will now close aside for one reserved for foreign travelers arriving in Korea.

Some 360-thousand people have used the treatment centers since they were first introduced in March 2020 in the city of Daegu in a bid to address hospital bed shortages.

The occupancy rate of the very first treatment center in Daegu's Dong District stood at one-point-eight percent as of Tuesday with just 36 of its more than 19-hundred beds in use.

With the closures, health authorities will implement new measures to deal with COVID-19 patients, including caring for those in vulnerable housing conditions and setting up quarantine rooms at separate facilities.

Also from Wednesday, makeshift test sites, 78 of which still remain, will be merged with test clinics located inside public health centers.