Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum will hold a meeting with hospital chiefs in the Seoul metropolitan area to discuss operations of intensive care beds amid a rising number of critically ill coronavirus patients, his office said Thursday.

Kim will have an emergency meeting with heads of 22 tertiary hospitals in the capital area on Friday to discuss the bed situation for serious COVID-19 patients following concerns over the region's medical capacity.

The Seoul metropolitan area, including the surrounding Gyeonggi Province and the western port city of Incheon, is home to half of the country's population and accounts for 80 percent of South Korea's daily COVID-19 caseload.

The meeting comes as the country continued to see an upward trend in the number of critically ill COVID-19 patients, with the latest tally surpassing 500, following its initiation of the "living with COVID-19" scheme this month with eased social distancing for people's gradual return to normal life.

The government already issued an administrative order to secure hospital beds to cope with the rising number of serious COVID-19 cases.

Kim earlier said the number of intensive care unit beds in use seems too big compared with the actual number of critically ill virus patients and asked hospitals to allocate critical care beds flexibly according to patients' condition. (Yonhap)