Korea's daily Covid-19 tally stayed below 400 for three straight days on Tuesday, but health officials expressed concerns over the continued cluster outbreaks ahead of the new school semester.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) confirmed 344 new patients, including 319 local infections. The cumulative caseload rose to 90,372 as of midnight Monday, after surpassing the 90,000-mark the day before. Imported cases also increased to 25 from 17.
The death toll stayed at a single-digit figure as the KCDA reported one more fatality, pushing the death toll to 1,585 with a fatality rate of 1.78 percent. An additional 268 patients fully recovered and returned to their everyday lives, increasing the total to 81,338. The country has tested 6,681,976 people since Jan. 3 last year.
Recent figures mark a sharp decrease from about 1,200 at the third viral wave peak in late December.
However, the authorities are still on high alert as persistent cluster infections at workplaces, hospitals and risk-prone facilities still pose challenges to the country's antivirus efforts. Authorities also closely monitor Covid-19 variants, which are considered more transmissible and have identified 156 such cases.
To suppress the virus's further spread, authorities have extended the current social distancing rules of Level 2 for the greater Seoul area and Level 1.5 for other regions for another two weeks until March 14.
Under the guidelines, restaurants and bars in Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province are allowed to remain open for an hour longer until 10 p.m. Bans on gatherings of five or more people, however, are in place nationwide.
The extended distancing scheme also coincides with the start of the new school semester, which started on Tuesday, as the government is moving toward in-person classes this year.
Under the new regulations, the Education Ministry has exempted attendance caps for daycare centers, kindergartens, and classes for first and second graders at elementary schools from the attendance quota. High school seniors will attend in-person classes the same as last year.
The ministry explained that it decided to expand in-person classes for young children as there were not many infections in schools last year. The number of cases for infants and young elementary school students was also very low.
Under the current Level 2 rules, other students will still have a mixture of remote and in-person classes, similar to last year's schedules.
Meanwhile, Korea has inoculated more than 20,000 people since it started its Covid-19 vaccination program last Friday. As of Tuesday, the country has inoculated a total of 23,086 people – 22,191 with the AstraZeneca vaccine and 895 with Pfizer's vaccine.
The government provides AstraZeneca's vaccine to health workers and patients under 65 at nursing homes and hospitals. It gives the Pfizer vaccine to frontline medical workers treating Covid-19 patients. The nation aims to attain herd immunity by November.
The government stressed that it is also considering adopting so-called vaccine passports for those who have received the jabs. However, officials noted that it would take some time to start implementing the policy.