South Korea announced this Friday that it will remove the main restrictions related to the pandemic, except for the mandatory use of the mask outdoors and indoors in the face of the fall in the country of infections caused by the Ómicron variant of the coronavirus.
As of April 18, cafes, bars and restaurants will no longer have to close at a stipulated time (they are currently required to do so at midnight) and there will be no limitations on the maximum number of people who can meet (currently the limitation is 10 people maximum), as announced at a press conference by the prime minister, Kim Boo-kyum.
“Ómicron has shown signs of weakening after reaching the peak in the third week of March (when the country surpassed it stood at almost 600,000 cases a day),” Kim said in statements collected by the Yonhap agency.
“For a considerable time, wearing the mask indoors is going to be inevitable,” said Kim, adding that the government will review in two weeks whether it withdraws its mandatory outdoor use.
The Prime Minister also announced the end of other restrictions, such as the limit of up to 299 people for major events, the maximum occupancy of 70% for places of worship or the possibility of eating in cinemas.
Although South Korea - which managed the first waves of infection very well thanks to its tracking and testing systems - hardly introduced restrictions in 2020, it had to do so from January 2021, and at one point in time banned meetings of more than two people after 18:00.
He withdrew them in November last year, but a month later he had to re-activate them and maintain them until now before the rush of a sixth wave and the omicron variant later.
Kim also announced that as of April 25, COVID-19 will no longer be a “class 1 infectious disease” such as Ebola or MERS and that it will become “class 2”, which in the future will allow those infected to be treated more flexibly and without the need for the current mandatory seven-day quarantine.
“Although we are now looking for a return to normality, we will be thoroughly prepared to assume that the risk may return,” the prime minister warned in any case.
The Asian country, which has been adding an average of 160,000 infections a day in the last week, has accumulated in total, with a population of about 51 million, some 16 million infections and just over 20,000 deaths, with a mortality rate of 0.13%.
(With information from EFE)
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