The government said on Wednesday that it will secure four-thousand more hospital beds for COVID-19 patients as it prepares to respond to a quicker-than-expected resurgence of the pandemic.

Second Vice Minister of Health and Welfare Lee Ki-il announced a set of countermeasures during a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, estimating the daily tally at the peak of the new omicron wave will be higher than expected and reach 300-thousand.

Assessing that the omicron subvariant BA.5 is spreading more swiftly than previously expected, Lee said the number of the so-called one-stop COVID-19 centers, in which diagnosis, treatment and prescription are all administered, will expand from 65-hundred to ten-thousand within this month.

The number of COVID-19 hospital beds will also increase by four-thousand to accommodate up to 300-thousand daily patients.

Quarantine measures at vulnerable facilities such as nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals will also be strengthened, including the enforcement of a mandatory PCR test every week for all employees. In-person visits to patients at those facilities will also be prohibited.