The government has decided to secure ten-thousand hospital beds in the capital area to deal with the surge in COVID-19 patients. 

The Health Ministry on Sunday unveiled a plan to prepare for a scenario of one-thousand new infections reported a day with 500 patients released from quarantine every day in the greater Seoul area for the next 20 days. 

The ministry decided that it needed a total of ten-thousand beds based on that assumption.  
 
It plans to secure a total of 300 beds for critically ill patients and 27-hundred beds for moderately ill or high-risk patients at hospitals specializing in infectious diseases. 

It will also secure seven-thousand beds for patients with mild or no symptoms at treatment facilities. 

With the current number of available beds at each type of facility, the ministry said it needs to secure 287 more beds for the critically ill and almost five-thousand more beds for asymptomatic or mild patients.