South Korean officials are taking steps to limit travel and gatherings during next week’s Lunar New Year’s holidays as they fight a steady rise in coronavirus transmissions
Senior Health Ministry official Yoon Taeho announced the plans on Wednesday while repeating a plea for people to stay home. He said officials will strengthen sanitization and install more thermal cameras at train stations, bus terminals and airports. Travelers will be required to be masked at all times and will be prohibited from eating food at highway rest areas.
Officials have also extended a clampdown on private social gatherings of five or more people, which they enforce by fining restaurants and other businesses if they accept large groups. Indoor dining at restaurants in the greater capital area will continue to be prohibited after 9 p.m.
Lunar New Year is celebrated around Asia and a popular time for people to travel to visit their relatives. China also has tried to discourage travel during the holiday to avoid the risk of viral outbreaks.
The holiday will come just after South Korean health officials detected the first local transmissions of what are feared to be more contagious forms of the virus first identified in Britain and South Africa.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said Wednesday that it found four cases of the British variant and one case of the South African variant where virus carriers were infected locally.
Since October, health workers have found 39 cases of new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19, also including a form that was first identified in Brazil, but the previous cases were international arrivals.
In all five of the locally transmitted cases, the virus carriers had been infected from relatives who recently arrived from abroad, the agency said.
The KDCA said it is expanding contact tracing to determine whether the new variants could have circulated further.
It also called for administrative officials to strengthen monitoring of passengers arriving from abroad so that they minimize their contact with other people during their two-week quarantine period, which in many cases can be done at home.
South Korea reported 467 new infections of the coronavirus on Wednesday, which brought the national caseload to 79,311, including 1,441 deaths.
In other developments in the Asia-Pacific region:
— New Zealand’s medical regulator has approved its first coronavirus vaccine, and officials hope to begin inoculating border workers by the end of March. Medsafe on Wednesday gave provisional approval for the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for people aged 16 and over. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern welcomed the development, saying it meant the country could begin preparing for its vaccine rollout. New Zealand has no community transmission of the virus, and border workers are considered the most vulnerable to catching and spreading the disease because they deal with arriving travelers, some of whom are infected. However, New Zealand’s success in stamping out the virus also means it will need to wait longer than many other countries to get vaccine doses for the general population. Officials say they hope to begin general inoculations by midyear.
February 03, 2021 at 11:14AM
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Asia Today: S. Korea steps up virus prevention for holiday - ABC News
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