Coronavirus: South Korea to end most Covid-19 restrictions, India slams 4 million deaths claim
- People in South Korea will still be required to wear masks, however, with the government planning to review whether to lift a rule for masks outdoors in two weeks
- Meanwhile, India’s tally of daily Covid-19 cases nearly doubled on Monday from the previous day to more than 2,000 for the first time in a month
South Korea lifted almost all of its Covid-19 precautions on Monday in a major step towards a return to normal life as the Omicron variant recedes and daily infections retreated to a more than two-month low of fewer than 50,000.
A midnight curfew on restaurants and other businesses was scrapped, along with a cap of 10 people allowed to gather. From next week, people will be allowed to eat snacks in cinemas and other indoor public facilities such as stadiums.
People are still required to wear masks, however, with the government planning to review whether to lift a rule for masks outdoors in two weeks.
The relaxation of the rules come as the number of coronavirus cases in South Korea fell to 47,743 on Monday, the lowest since February 9, after hovering at more than 620,000 a day in mid-March.
Some rules, however, remain including mandatory quarantine for unvaccinated inbound travellers and negative PCR tests for the fully vaccinated.
South Korea has largely managed to limit deaths and critical cases through widespread vaccination, and it has scaled back the aggressive tracing and containment efforts that made it a mitigation success story from most of the first two years of the pandemic.
Nearly 87 per cent of the 52 million population are fully vaccinated, with 64 per cent having also had a booster, according to Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency data.
South Korea to remove most curbs as ‘lives return to normal’
In line with the easing of the rules, companies are gradually returning to their offices.
Most staff at giant steelmaker POSCO have returned to their offices this month, becoming one of the first major firms to bring people back.
LG Electronics said it had reduced the proportion of employees working from home to 30 per cent from 50 per cent from Monday, while scrapping a limit on the number of people allowed in meetings.
Samsung Electronics said it had yet to implement its back-to-office plan and the public sector is also awaiting new government guidelines.
The Bank of Korea, which has 30 per cent of its head office staff working from home, is considering easing its guidelines, officials said.
The government had recommended workplaces with 300 or more employees adopt flexible working hours and have 10 per cent of staff work from home.
India slams WHO study citing 4 million deaths
The New York Times reported last week that New Delhi had stalled the study’s release after disputing that India’s true fatality count was eight times higher than official figures.
The conclusion matches similar figures by the Lancet last month and a February study in the journal Science that calculated a Covid-19 death toll of at least 3.2 million.
But India’s health ministry said in a weekend statement that the WHO’s mathematical modelling of the pandemic was “questionable” and “statistically unproven”.
01:57
Indian volunteers give respectful final farewell to abandoned bodies of Covid-19 victims
Several concerns were raised to the global health body over the report, including what the ministry said was a “peculiar” assumption of a relationship between lower temperatures and monthly deaths.
India had shared its misgivings through several formal communications and meetings since last November, according to the ministry. “A satisfactory response is yet to be received from WHO,” it added.
The WHO was not immediately available for comment.
Indian officials have previously disputed the methodology behind the Lancet and Science studies that also found vastly higher death tolls.
India’s hospitals overwhelmed, graveyards overflowing as virus cases surge
Its official figures show 520,000 Covid deaths nationally, which still accounts for the world’s largest single-country toll after the United States and Brazil.
India was battered by a devastating outbreak last year that saw thousands of people dying each day at its peak, overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums.
Its tally of daily Covid-19 cases nearly doubled on Monday from the previous day to more than 2,000 for the first time in a month, government data showed, with the southern state of Kerala reporting a big jump in deaths.
Almost all Indonesians have Covid-19 antibodies: survey
Almost all Indonesians have developed antibodies against Covid-19, according to the latest government survey conducted in March.
About 99.2 per cent of the population in the survey had antibodies against the virus because of vaccinations or past infections, Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said in his weekly briefing on Monday.
That is higher than almost 87 per cent recorded in the previous survey in December. Antibody levels were also higher among respondents in the March survey, he added.
What to do in Bali now the ‘Island of the Gods’ is quarantine-free
However, residents are still discouraged from travelling overseas to avoid exposure to new subvariant of the virus currently spreading in other countries, Sadikin said.
Reporting by Reuters, Agence-France Presse, Bloomberg
