NEWS BRIEF

[Anchor Lead]

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as of 9AM today, 105 countries and regions have either banned or restricted entries for visitors from Korea. As of 11:59 pm today, Singapore will also ban entry for all people who have visited Korea within 14 days.
In a meeting to counter the COVID-19 epidemic, the government and the ruling party have decided to find all measures to boost mask production like stopping almost all mask exports and encouraging weekend productions. They also agreed to make it easier for people to purchase masks by including masks in the DUR system, which obtains and shares people's drug usage information.
The government has set up an extraordinary budget of 11.7 trillion won to compensate for the economic loss incurred from the COVID-19 outbreak. The budget plan will be presented to the National Assembly tomorrow as it was passed at cabinet meeting today.
The Korea International Trade Association's data from January when the COVID-19 epidemic had just started showed that Korea's January export of other textile materials, which include masks, increased by nine times year-on-year to about 72.6 million dollars. Among them, exports to China accounted for about 61.35 million dollars, a staggering 75-fold jump from the same time last year.