Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Calls growing to tighten social distancing rules, curb virus spread
People sit far apart at a food court in Seoul Station, Thursday, in line with the government's social distancing measures amid the spread of COVID-19. Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
The government is facing growing calls to place stricter social distancing guidelines on the greater Seoul area, as daily new COVID-19 infections in the country soared by triple digits for the seventh consecutive day Thursday.
Some even worry that the situation is worse than the mass infections linked with the Shincheonji religious sect or Itaewon nightclubs in the early stages of the pandemic.
The recent resurgence of new cases is more serious due to a high risk of the virus spreading at a faster rate due to the likelihood of a large number of asymptomatic carriers or those showing only mild symptoms who are going about their daily lives in the densely populated capital while unaware that they have infected.
Epidemiologists warned that if the number of cases keeps increasing, it is highly unlikely that the government's quarantine measures will remain effective.
“The virus spread in the Seoul metropolitan area is much faster than we initially expected. It will be better for the health authorities to place tougher social distancing measures proactively from the current Level 2 to 3, but I understand it's not easy to make such a decision mainly due to economic reasons,” said Jacob Lee, professor at the Infectious Disease Department of Hallym University Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital.
With the daily number of new cases nearly 300 a few times over the past few days, Lee said the health authorities' contact tracing work will become too difficult.
“In a sense, I strongly advise people to keep the social distancing rules as if they were under Level 3,” he said.
The highest level measure can only be issued when the number of daily virus cases reaches a two-week average of 100 to 200 or the doubling of new COVID-19 cases occurs more than twice a week. Under Level 3, all meetings of 10 people or more will be banned and all students will be prohibited from attending school.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 288 new infections, Wednesday, including 276 local infections, raising the total caseload to 16,346. Most domestic cases linked to churches were reported in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. Of new cases, 135 were reported in the capital city of Seoul, 81 in Gyeonggi Province and 10 in Incheon, west of Seoul.
The daily new virus cases have been in the triple digits since last Friday when 103 new infections were detected. More than 1,500 cases have been newly identified over the past week.