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 With the majority of the 1,212 new cases as of midnight Tuesday
coming from densely populated Seoul, officials extended movement
curbs in the capital and surrounding regions for at least another
week and are considering pushing restrictions back up to the highest
level.
According to Yonhap news agency, Wednesday's cases were also
expected to top 1,000, with 1,010 already tallied by 6 p.m. (0900
GMT)
Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said a fourth wave of the virus was
spreading rapidly, especially among unvaccinated people in their 20s
and 30s, while a growing number of highly contagious Delta variant
cases raised new worries.
Kim urged people in that demographic to get tested preemptively "to
protect not just yourself, but everyone in your family, friends,
school and the country."
"If the situation is not under control after monitoring for two to
three days, it might leave us with no choice but to impose the
strictest of all social distancing levels," Kim said.
President Moon Jae-in ordered the military be mobilized to aid wider
contact tracing and urged authorities to open additional testing
centres in densely populated areas, presidential spokeswoman Park
Kyung-mee told reporters on Wednesday.
The daily caseload was the highest since Dec. 25, when South Korea
was battling a third wave of the pandemic.
Officials had been moving in recent weeks toward a full reopening of
the country. Movement restrictions in much of the country were eased
on July 1, although officials in greater Seoul held off as they
watched case numbers beginning to creep up again.
Health experts said the relaxation of measures that restricted
business operating hours and social gatherings outside of Seoul,
along with the knowledge that further easings would be coming, led
to public complacency, particularly in socially mobile younger
people in the capital.
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon called on the prime minister to consider
expanding vaccinations to younger people, which he said would
alleviate the situation.
Around 85% of the new locally transmitted cases were in the Seoul
metropolitan area, which is home to more than half of the country's
population.
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 "While the infection rate has
dropped relatively in the people aged over 60 on
the back of inoculation drive, the transmission
continues in the unvaccinated group," said Kim
Tark, associate professor of infectious disease
at Soonchunhyang University Bucheon Hospital.
"It’s a reminder to speed up vaccination for
people under 60." VACCINES
ARRIVE
Just 10% of the country's population of 52 million people have been
fully vaccinated, while 30% have received at least one shot, the
majority of them aged over 60.
The Korean Medical Association urged the government to refrain from
any hasty decisions to ease social distancing policies with
vaccinations at low levels.
The country received 700,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine
from Israel on Wednesday under a swap arrangement, along with a
separate shipment of 627,000 directly purchased doses.
Some of the new supply will be sent to greater Seoul for inoculation
programmes due to start on July 13, authorities said.
Improved vaccination levels have helped lower South Korea's
mortality rate to 1.25% and the number of severe cases to 155 as of
Wednesday, down significantly from 1.41% and 311 cases reported
during the previous peak in late December.
The country has reported a total of 162,753 infections and 2,033
deaths during the pandemic.
The number of Delta variant cases jumped from around 30 cases three
weeks ago to over 150 cases last week, according to the health
ministry. South Korea has so far reported a total of 2,817 cases of
COVID-19 variants, 80% of which were the Alpha variant, first
detected in Britain.
(Reporting by Sangmi Cha; Editing by Miyoung Kim, Jane Wardell and
Kim Coghill)
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