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| People line up to take a COVID-19 test at a temporary screening center on a construction site in southern Seoul, Friday. The number of daily new coronavirus infections reached a record high of 2,434, Thursday, following the Chuseok holiday period. Yonhap |
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Daily new COVID-19 infections spiked to an all-time high of 2,434, Thursday, after the fear that increasing numbers of people traveling across the country during the Chuseok holiday would fuel the spread of the coronavirus became a reality.
The new high broke the previous record of 2,221 seen Aug. 10. New cases have exceeded 1,000 for 80 days in a row now, as the country remains under the prolonged fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic, driven by the highly contagious Delta variant.
Public health officials are now concerned that the daily number of new cases could surge beyond 3,000 next week.
According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the number of daily new infections was in the 1,700s during the holiday period but soared to over 2,000 immediately because a larger number of people underwent tests after the Chuseok holiday ended Wednesday.
Traditionally a festival to celebrate the autumn full moon, Chuseok these days is a time when Koreans travel to their hometowns for family gatherings and to hold ancestral rites. The government loosened up some social distancing restrictions on social gatherings during the holiday period, allowing up to eight people to gather together if four of them are fully vaccinated.
"The number of infections grew as residents of Seoul and the surrounding metropolitan area visited their hometowns in the provinces, came back and got retested," a health ministry official said in a press briefing, Friday. "As a large number of hometown visitors are expected to get tested during the next several days, the number of confirmed infections may increase further next week."
Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum expressed worries over the explosive spread of the coronavirus.
"Proving the high transmissibility of the Delta variant, the number of daily infections hit a new all-time high just a day after the Chuseok holiday ended. Many experts predicted that the increased movement of people during the holiday would result in this, but the speed of the actual spread is shocking, and we are sorry that we couldn't prevent it in advance," Kim said during an interagency meeting on the government's COVID-19 response, Friday.
"Please tighten your COVID-19 prevention measures, which might have been relaxed during the extended holiday period. If the spread continues, the phased plan to recover daily life by living with COVID-19 will have to be implemented at a later date."
The government's current social distancing measures ― at the highest Level 4 in the four-tier system for Seoul and the surrounding metropolitan area, including Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, and Level 3 for the rest of the country ― are scheduled to end Oct. 3, which is when the health authorities will announce their next steps, after observing the impact of the Chuseok holiday.
Meanwhile, the government will announce its COVID-19 vaccination protocol for the fourth quarter Monday, which will include children and pregnant women, as well as booster shots for vulnerable groups.
