The government has decided to reduce the number of hospital beds for COVID-19 patients on the assessment that the pandemic situation has stabilized. 

Chairing a government meeting on COVID-19 response, health minister Cho Kyoo-hong said Friday that the government will reduce the number of such beds from around 58-hundred to 39-hundred.

Cho noted that the COVID-19 reproduction number, which helps forecast virus prevalence, slipped to zero-point-77 after seeing a drop for the third consecutive week and that the occupancy rate of ICU beds for critically-ill COVID-19 patients stood at 20-point-eight percent. 

The minister said that though the number of cases rose slightly after the Lunar New Year holiday, key quarantine indices remain at stable levels. 

New COVID-19 cases stood in the 31-thousand range on Friday, up around 16 percent from last week.