SEOUL– South Korea’s new coronavirus cases fell below 2,000 for the second day in a row Tuesday amid its “living with COVID-19” scheme meant to bring the country gradually back to pre-pandemic normalcy.
The country reported 1,589 new COVID-19 cases, raising the total caseload to 367,974, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.
The daily caseload fell below the 2,000 level Monday after reporting more than 2,000 cases for four days in a row.
Of the total, 1,578 were local infections, the KDCA said. Eleven cases came from overseas, putting the cumulative total at 15,124.
Of the locally transmitted cases, Seoul had 598 cases, with the surrounding Gyeonggi Province logging 499 cases and Incheon, west of Seoul, 112 cases.
Health officials said 23,072, or 0.076 percent of people vaccinated in South Korea, are estimated to have been infected as “breakthrough” cases.
The death toll rose by 16 to 2,874 on Tuesday, the health authorities said.
As of 9 p.m. Tuesday, South Korea had reported 2,274 new cases, up 951 from the previous day. Cases are counted until midnight and announced the following morning, while the southeastern city of Busan stopped releasing real-time data on Monday.
Daily caseloads tend to decrease on weekends and holidays due to less testing and go up between Tuesday and Thursday.
On Monday, the country began its “living with COVID-19” scheme as part of a broader plan to gradually lift the virus restrictions by the end of February amid the rising rate of vaccinations.
The health authorities remain on high alert as there might be cluster infections following the Halloween weekend, with daily new cases possibly raising by twofold or threefold.
“Some countries that have attempted to return to normalcy have seen a resurgence of coronavirus cases after one or two months,” Lee Sang-won, a senior official at the KDCA, said at a press briefing.
Lee called on citizens to strictly follow the new COVID-19 guidelines to prevent a resurgence.
Meanwhile, the weekly data showed an increase in new cases. The average new COVID-19 cases for last week stood at 1,716, up 28.2 percent from the previous week.
Health and education authorities stressed the importance of preventing an outbreak in schools, saying that the average number of daily cases among students reached an all-time high of 297.4 cases.
“As elementary, middle and high schools are expected to fully open their doors to students, and exams at universities will be held across the country soon, preventing an outbreak in schools is most important,” Lee said at the briefing.
Under the first of the three-phase scheme, people are allowed to gather in groups of up to 10, regardless of vaccination. Still, basic preventive measures like wearing masks indoors will stay in effect.
Operation hour curfews for businesses that cover restaurants, cafes and movie theaters are fully lifted, except for entertainment facilities.
High-risk facilities, such as bars and nightclubs, are required to introduce the “vaccine pass” system under which visitors have to show that they have been fully vaccinated or have a negative test result.
About 41.22 million people, or 80.3 percent of the country’s 52 million population, have received their first COVID-19 vaccine shots. The number of fully vaccinated people came to 38.8 million, or 75.6 percent, the KDCA said.
Source: Yonhap News Agency