The government may have to maintain the strict mask rule even on those who received their first shots of Covid-19 vaccines if the country sees a rise in variant cases, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said.
The government had previously announced that it would allow people administered with their first vaccine doses to do without face masks outdoors as part of its efforts to incentivize citizens to receive the vaccine. Under the loosened rules, health authorities will also allow restaurants and cafes to open till midnight.
It will also permit the gathering of six people until July 14 in the Seoul metro region before increasing the limit to eight.
No restrictions will be placed on other areas after the first two weeks of next month.
The eased rules will be put into place as a rising number of variant cases threaten the country's virus fight.
Ahead of implementing the eased rules, health experts expressed concerns over the possible surge in new cases, as people in their 20s to 50s have yet to be inoculated amid a steady rise in new variant cases.
Reflecting such concerns, Prime Minister Kim said that the government would have to readopt the mask mandate if the nation fails to contain the spread of variants, particularly the steady rise of the highly contagious Delta variant.
"When the government applies its eased social distancing from next month, the risk of spreading the infection will inevitably increase. Notably, the Delta variant virus is spreading," Kim said. “Even countries with high vaccination rates are tightening the reins of quarantine as the Delta variant threatens to bring about another viral wave.”
The prime minister pointed out that the daily number of confirmed cases in the U.K., which had dropped to around 1,000, rose again to 20,000 due to the rise in Delta variants.
"After relaxing quarantine restrictions, we will also run into another outbreak of the Covid-19 virus if people fail to behave responsibly," he said. "Please feel a sense of crisis and responsibility and take special quarantine measures from the beginning of July."
In the same vein, the government also decided to conduct a two-week special quarantine inspection in the greater Seoul area, including Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, which has recently accounted for most daily Covid-19 cases.
During this period, officials from relevant ministries and the three local governments plan to intensively check the implementation of quarantine rules for multi-use facilities such as entertainment facilities, karaoke, and indoor sports facilities.
Following the zero-tolerance principle, they will adopt a one-strike-out system to establishments that violate quarantine rules, such as fines for negligence and bans on gatherings.
The government has vaccinated 15,304,120 people – 10,392,028 with the AstraZeneca vaccine, 3,762,993 with Pfizer's vaccine, 1,126,969 with Janssen's vaccine, 22,130 with Moderna's vaccine – with the first shot of the vaccine up 12,703 from the previous day.
The figure accounts for 29.8 percent of the country's population.
On Tuesday, the KDCA confirmed 595 new virus cases, including 560 local infections, raising the cumulative caseload to 156,167.
Two more people died of Covid-19, raising the death toll to 2,017 with a fatality rate of 1.29 percent. A total of 147,077 people have returned to their daily life after full recovery, up 402 from the previous day. The country has carried out 10,555,741 tests since Jan. 3 last year.