Korea’s new Covid-19 cases stayed around 60 for the second straight day on Friday as the nation saw continued imported cases coupled with the rebound in local infections.
The 60 new cases included 39 foreign infections, raising the cumulative caseload to 13,672 as of midnight Thursday, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The total number of people released from quarantine after full recoveries stood at 12,460, up 64 from the previous day.
Two additional virus-linked deaths occurred, increasing the death toll to 293. The country, with a population of 50 million, has carried out 1,451,017 tests since Jan. 3.
The caseload on Friday marks the third time this week that the daily rise of virus cases reached 60 or above. The nation had reported 62 and 61 new cases on Monday and Thursday, respectively. The accumulated total of imported cases has surpassed 2,000 with the nation recording a double-digit number of foreign inflows for the 22nd consecutive day since June 26.
Of the 39 imported cases on Wednesday, 25 were detected at port and airport checkpoints. Many recent imported cases have been traced back to Korean workers returning from a construction worksite in Iraq.
“The Covid-19 outbreak in Iraq is currently raging with the nation confirming about 2,000 patients daily,” Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said, adding that the government has decided to transport Korean workers from the Middle East country directly.
“Protecting the safety and health of Korean workers who have been exposed to the threat of infectious diseases, while working away from their families for national interests, is a national responsibility,” Chung said. “Therefore, we decided to send a chartered flight as early as next week to help the remaining 800 Korean workers in Iraq return home safely.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport will take steps to ensure that transportation, quarantine, and treatment support are sufficiently provided based on the experience of transporting the Koreans from Wuhan and Italy, Chung added.
On the local front, the public health authorities also confirmed a spike in new cases back to 20 or above for the first time in five days.
Health officials reported 12 new cases in the greater Seoul area, including the western port city of Incheon and surrounding Gyeonggi Province, five instances in Gwangju, three cases in Jeju Island, and one in Daejeon.
Amid the unrelenting community outbreaks, the government has also decided to clarify criterion to upgrade its regional social distancing scheme.
It was June 29 that the health authorities began to implement a three-level social distancing system depending on the Covid-19 outbreak's severity. However, due to the absence of a clear standard for regional adjustment of such phases, it was difficult to respond quickly to the spread of infection by region.
“If the daily regional local infections exceed 10 to 40 for a week, depending on different regions, the social distancing grade can go up to Level 2,” the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters said. “The metropolitan and provincial governments can use the new criteria for each region and upgrade the social distancing level by themselves if the number of confirmed patients increases rapidly within a short period.”
The average daily infection per week baseline to upgrade the social distancing scheme to Level 2 was set at 40 cases in the metropolitan area, 25 in South Gyeongsang province, 20 in North Gyeongsang province, Chungcheong Province, and Jeolla Province, and 10 in Gangwon Province and Jeju Island.
If metropolitan and provincial governments want to increase their social distancing to Level 3, they must discuss the necessity and specific criteria with the Ministry of Health and Welfare and the KCDC in advance, health officials said.