Acknowledging that Covid-19 variants pose a significant threat to the country’s quarantine efforts, a top health official said the government would do everything in its power to contain their spread.
"Variant viruses are a major threat to our quarantine effort," Minister of Health and Welfare Kwon Deok-chul said during a daily task force meeting Tuesday. "Even in countries with the highest vaccination rates, the high infectivity of variant cases has once again turned on the warning light on the spread of infection."
The effects variant cases have on quarantine responses in Korea are not dominant yet, but the government will constantly monitor infection situations abroad, Kwon added. The daily number of imported cases has topped 40 for the third consecutive day.
Particularly, the U.K. and the U.S., whose vaccination rates topped 50 percent, have been struggling with the rising cases of the Delta variant.
"The government's standardization of variant virus analysis techniques has made testing possible at the local government level, and we will strengthen monitoring and analysis of variant viruses in the future," he said. "The government will continue to strengthen quarantine measures, including facility isolation of those arriving from high-risk countries, and will do its best to prevent the spread of the virus by operating a joint response team in case of a major variant outbreak."
Kwon reiterated the need for people to receive the vaccine, saying there are scientific reports that existing vaccines can combat such variant cases.
The government has vaccinated 15,039,998 people – 10,377,669 with the AstraZeneca vaccine, 3,540,488 with Pfizer's vaccine, 1,121,329 with Janssen's vaccine, and 512 with Moderna's vaccine – with the first shot of the vaccine up 20,231 from the previous day.
The figure accounts for 29.3 percent of the country's population.
On Tuesday, the KDCA confirmed 395 new virus cases, including 351 local infections, raising the cumulative caseload to 151,901.
Two more people died of Covid-19, raising the death toll to 2,006 with a fatality rate of 1.32 percent. A total of 143,817 people have returned to their daily life after full recovery, up 549 from the previous day. The country's total test number has surpassed 10 million, accounting for about a fifth of the country's population. It has carried out 10,380,043 tests since Jan. 3 last year.
During the daily task force meeting, the government decided to unveil new social distancing steps on Sunday.
"The central government will first gather regional distancing plans and their implementation period until Wednesday," Ministry of Health and Welfare Spokesperson Son Young-rae said. "It then will have consultations with local governments for two days and announce the national plan on Sunday.”
The new measures will strengthen the autonomy of each local government to manage regional quarantine. For example, local governments can adjust operating hours for businesses or voluntarily cancel them, considering their vaccination rates and medical systems.