CASES OF DELTA VARIANT SURGE

[Anchor Lead]

Last weekend over 700 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Korea. That’s a lot given that it was a weekend and it rained due to the start of the monsoon season. More than 80 percent of the coronavirus cases were detected in the greater Seoul area. The number of Delta variant cases keeps rising as well, especially among people in their 20s and 30s.

[Pkg]

People stand in line at a COVID-19 screening station. Although fewer tests are conducted over weekends, the number of new daily cases hovers above 700 for days now.

[Soundbite] Yang Min-joo(Seoul resident) : "I got a call that one of my coworkers had contracted COVID-19. That’s why I came here. More people from near my workplace are becoming infected."

In the past week more than 80 percent of daily cases were reported in the greater Seoul area. Those in their 20s and 30s, who frequent bars and clubs, account for nearly 40 percent of the infected. Cases of the highly transmissible Delta variant now account for more than 18 percent of all coronavirus cases reported in the nation.

[Soundbite] Kim Boo-kyum(Prime Minister) : "If we fail to contain the spread in the greater Seoul area now, the outbreak may spread nationwide, and vaccinations of ordinary citizens scheduled for the end of July could be hampered."

With virus surges occurring in many countries around the world, on Sunday alone 81 cases in Korea were imported, the second-highest since January 2020. Most of them were brought in from Indonesia. Health authorities have banned Korean nationals without negative PCR test certificates from boarding planes bound for South Korea from Indonesia. The government will announce new COVID-19 restrictions on July 7 after monitoring the situation in the Seoul metropolitan area.