South Korea on Saturday eased curfews on more than half a million restaurants and other businesses outside the capital Seoul, letting them stay open an hour later, amid a public backlash over tight curbs to contain COVID-19, Trend reports citing Xinhua.
After using aggressive testing and tracing to blunt several earlier waves of the coronavirus without drastic lockdowns, the authorities have imposed increasingly rigid social distancing rules as they fight the latest wave of the epidemic.
The restraints have pushed small business owners and self-employed people to the limits of what they can endure, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun told an intra-agency meeting on Saturday.
So businesses outside the capital will now be able to stay open until 10 p.m., but “the 9 p.m. operations restriction remains as is in the metropolitan Seoul area, where more than 70% of total infections are concentrated and still faces the risk of virus transmission,” Chung said.
The businesses include some 580,000 cafes, restaurants, indoor fitness facilities and karaoke bars, Vice Health Minister Kang Do-tae told a briefing.
Businesses that flout the virus prevention guidelines will be ordered to close for two weeks, Kang said.
Most of the new cases were in Seoul, the neighbouring port city of Incheon, and Gyeonggi Province, home to over 25 million people.