South Korea needs to train for potential infectious disease outbreaks worse than Covid-19 and detailed treatment guidelines, as risks of more frequent such outbreaks rise and public sickbeds remain tight, Reuters reported a senior government official as saying.

South Korea's early success to tame the novel coronavirus through aggressive contact tracing and testing has been touted by disease experts worldwide as gold standard of how to effectively control infectious disease.

Its early state intervention limited widespread community infections and helped hospitals keep sickbeds available for severely affected patients.

But its extremely low rate of public hospital beds — only 10 per cent of total — remains a potential weak spot, as the country continues to battle small but persistent outbreaks and front-line public healthcare workers suffer burnout after more than six months of treating Covid-19 patients.