Amid surge, S. Korea looks to end COVID restrictions
STORY: South Korea hit a record daily COVID-19 high with more than 600-thousand new cases and 429 deaths, authorities said on Thursday. But the country that once held an aggressive stance against COVID is set to end restrictions.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said the highly infectious Omicron variant was driving the record wave of infections.
Despite the numbers, the government shows no sign of rethinking plans to remove almost all social distancing restrictions in coming days and weeks, and public opinion appears to support those moves.
Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency spokesman Lee Sang-Won.
“There is a limit to curbing the Omicron's high transmission rate with the social distancing rules that we have imposed until now. And the tough distancing rules cause a lot of social burden.”
The country has pushed back a curfew on eateries to 11 p.m., stopped enforcing vaccine passes, and plans to drop a quarantine for vaccinated travelers arriving from overseas.
A decision on whether to ease further measures, such as a current six-person limit on private gatherings, is expected as early as Friday. South Korea also mandates masks in all public indoor and outdoor spaces.
Though it never adopted a "zero COVID" policy and never imposed wide lockdowns, South Korea once used aggressive tracking, tracing, and quarantines to control new cases.
Nearly 63% of the country's 52 million residents had received booster shots, officials said, with 86% of the population fully vaccinated.
