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| Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol, right, speaks about changes to the government's COVID-19 response during a press conference at the Government Complex Seoul, Friday. Yonhap |
Curfew to continue for 3 more weeks with eased rules for private gatherings
By Bahk Eun-ji
A court has partially suspended the government's vaccine pass system, allowing people to enter large supermarkets, department stores and retail stores without providing their COVID-19 vaccination status.
The pass system will remain effective for eateries and cafes, however.
The Seoul Administrative Court partially accepted the injunction request filed by 1,023 people including doctors, religious leaders and citizens against Seoul City, Friday, to suspend the vaccine pass scheme for the big stores in Seoul. The suspension will continue until the court makes a separate ruling on their complaints to nullify the scheme.
The decision halted the vaccine pass system at the stores with floor space of 3,000 square meters or larger. As the complaints were about the pass system in the capital, the suspension is also limited to Seoul.
For using the other facilities subject to the vaccine pass, such as restaurants, cafes and movie theaters, the vaccine pass or negative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results are still required.
"Restaurants and cafes have a relatively higher risk of infection than other multiuse facilities because users cannot keep their masks on. But supermarkets and department stores are lower risk," the court said.
"But Seoul City applied the vaccine pass scheme for the stores with a size of over 3,000 square meters, which are essential for daily life, and limited entry of unvaccinated people. This is an excessive restriction."
The court also halted the vaccine pass requirement for children aged 12-18 for not only the stores but also all multiuse facilities.
"Children of the age group have very low chances of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19 infection and there have been no deaths here in the age group. We don't see any reasonable grounds to include them in the vaccine pass scheme."
The 1,023 people earlier filed the complaints, saying the effectiveness of the vaccine pass scheme is unclear, it is not applied consistently and it virtually makes daily life unattainable for unvaccinated people and thus forces them to get a shot.
Separately from the vaccine pass system, the government decided to extend social distancing regulations for three more weeks, continuing to restrict business operations after 9 p.m., but with a slightly eased rule for the size of private gatherings from four to six.
Korea's quarantine and treatment schemes will also become more focused on dealing with the Omicron variant, which is expected to become the dominant strain here in a couple of weeks and is feared to largely increase the total infections.
The decision has come amid concerns over the fast spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant especially ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which runs from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2, during which a large number of people will return to their hometowns to visit their relatives.
"Despite the decreased number of infections and serious cases of COVID-19 compared to December, the downward trend has been stalled recently and the Lunar New Year, where massive movement and contacts of people take place, is just two weeks ahead," Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said in a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters.
Kim said maintaining the distancing rules are inevitable as easing them is feared to cause an explosive increase in infections.
Under the rules to be applied through Feb. 6, the limit to the number of people at private gatherings will be eased from four to six, but the limit on operating hours for cafes and restaurants will be the same, forcing them to close at 9 p.m.
Along with the social distancing rules, the government announced changes in its quarantine and medical response system which it said will better deal with the highly transmissible but less lethal Omicron variant.
The government predicts Omicron will take up more than half of total infections by around Jan. 21. Health experts said if social distancing rules are partially eased, the number of daily infections is expected to surge up to 30,000 by the end of next month and that of critically ill patients to around 1,700 from the current 700.
Under the revised system, when the daily infections exceed 7,000, the self-quarantine period for patients and those who come into close contact with a patient will be shortened from 10 days to seven.
While PCR tests will be conducted mainly for high-risk groups such as the elderly or people with underlying diseases, rapid antigen detection tests will be conducted for others at clinics, even in small ones in the neighborhood. Such clinics will also be in charge of treating coronavirus patients with mild symptoms.
The government will also consider administering COVID-19 vaccines to children aged between five and 11, as well as providing a fourth shot for the medically vulnerable.
"The country's medical system is facing a great challenge," Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol said.
"If you look at the cases of other countries, the number of daily infections increased tens of times when responses were late, leading to a soaring number of hospitalized patients and paralysis of their medical systems."
Meanwhile, the country added 4,542 new COVID-19 infections for Thursday, including 4,133 locally transmitted. Forty-nine deaths were reported, raising the total to 6,259, with a fatality rate of 0.92 percent, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.
