“Korea has reached a point where the government cannot just continue to strengthen its quarantine rules,” New KDCA Commissioner Peck Kyong-ran said on Thursday.

So, the government will decide the level, considering people’s acceptability and social influence under the principle of “scientific quarantine,” Peck added.

"Our society has been able to contain the pandemic crisis better than other countries by making scientific progress and establishing quarantine measures that people voluntarily accepted and practiced," she said at the first news conference since taking office. "However, concerns remain about a resurge of Covid-19 with new infectious diseases, such as monkeypox."

Peck stressed that now is the time to upgrade the infectious disease response system based on Korea's accumulated experience, suggesting that the keyword for future quarantine rules will be evidence-based scientific quarantine policy.

The government will focus on three major tasks -- a quarantine big data platform, the participation of a wide range of experts, and policy research based on analysis of population group characteristics—she added.

Peck positively evaluated the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency under the former commissioner, Jeong Eun-kyeong.

"Although information about Covid-19 was very limited and there was a lot of uncertainty, the KDCA made a lot of effort to make a scientific judgment by gathering various pieces of evidence under Commissioner Jeong," Peck said.

However, Peck criticized the KDCA under her predecessor, such as the continued and tight social distancing policy without properly reflecting experts' opinions when deciding on policies.

"While there was very limited data about Covid-19 at the start of the epidemic, the KDCA needed to analyze the data accumulated over the past two and a half years," Peck said. "Although strict quarantine rules were unavoidable initially, it is no longer possible to strengthen quarantine measures blindly as we have much more data."

The KDCA will organize and reflect more rational and publicly acceptable policies by analyzing the data, she added.

Peck also commented on lifting the quarantine obligation for confirmed Covid-19 patients, which the government will decide in the middle of this month.

"As the infection will inevitably increase if the government lifts the quarantine obligation, we need to reach a social consensus on how much burden and damage Korea can bear," Peck said. "At the same time, we need to reorganize the medical system to reduce damage as much as possible and establish social culture and system where people take breaks when they are sick."

Peck stressed that Korea would expand the target of the fourth vaccination to the entire nation only after evaluating the situation of future epidemics, previous vaccination status, and reduced immunity to infection.

"We will comprehensively evaluate the effects of the fourth vaccination and the effectiveness of the improved vaccine against variants to establish a vaccination strategy," Peck said. "If we confirm the efficacy of the improved vaccine against variants, we will actively proceed with the introduction of the improved vaccine."

The KDCA said that Korea added 12,161 Covid-19 cases, including 65 from overseas, on Thursday, bringing the total to 18,200,346.

The country added 18 Covid-19 deaths, bringing the total death toll to 24,323. The fatality rate stood at 0.13 percent. The number of critically ill patients came to 106, down from 114 the previous day.

As of Thursday, 44.6 million, or 86.9 percent of the population, had completed the full two-dose vaccinations, and 33.33 million, representing 64.9 percent, had received their first booster shots. More than 4.21 million people, or 8.2 percent of the population, had gotten their second booster shots, the KDCA said.