South Korea launches panel to debate ‘living with COVID-19’

FREEPIK

Sangmi Cha

SEOUL, Oct 13 (Reuters) –

South


Korea

established a

panel

on Wednesday to

debate

a strategy on how to “live with

COVID

-19″ in the long-term, as the country seeks to phase out coronavirus restrictions and reopen the economy amid rising vaccination levels.

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

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.

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

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. –

Reuters