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 Under the strategy, the government aims to relax coronavirus
restrictions for citizens who can prove they have been fully
vaccinated, while encouraging asymptomatic and mild COVID-19
patients aged below 70 to recover at home, the health ministry said
last week.
The government will also focus on the number of hospitalisations and
deaths rather than new daily infections, and will consider not
publishing the latter on a daily basis, Yonhap news agency has
reported.
"We will turn COVID-19 into a controlled infectious disease and no
longer a fear of the unknown, and return a complete routine to the
citizens," Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum told the panel's first
committee meeting on Wednesday, adding that mandatory mask-wearing
would not be immediately scrapped under the new policy.
South Korea never imposed a full lockdown but has been under its
tightest social distancing curbs https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-raise-covid-19-curbs-highest-level-seoul-says-pm-2021-07-08
since July.
These include limited operating hours for restaurants, cafes, saunas
and indoor gyms - which have hit the self-employed and small
businesses particularly hard - and a cap on gatherings of more than
two people after 6 p.m. (0900 GMT) in and around Seoul.
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The new strategy comes as vaccination, initially bogged down by a
supply shortage, has picked up pace. The country has given at least
one COVID-19 vaccine dose to 78.1% of its population, while 60.7%
are fully vaccinated.
In September, the government announced plans to expedite a phased
return to normalcy https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/skorea-planning-live-more-normally-with-covid-19-after-october-2021-09-08
starting November when 70% of its 52 million people are expected to
have been fully inoculated.
South Korea has kept hospitalisation and deaths at a fairly low
rate. It had 359 severe cases and a mortality rate 0.78% as of
Tuesday, official data showed.
The country reported 1,584 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday. It has
recorded a total of 335,742 infections and 2,605 deaths.
(Reporting by Sangmi Cha; Editing by Ana Nicolaci da Costa)
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