In addition to travel restrictions, the Korean government requires employers to be flexible in coordinating workers, allowing 30% of employees to work from home during the unpredictable epidemic.
Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum asked citizens returning from vacations to proactively seek out local medical facilities and get tested for Covid-19 before returning to their daily activities and work.
The government encourages companies to coordinate human resources to limit the spread of the epidemic (illustrative photo: The New York Times).
On August 17, the latest data recorded 1,373 new Covid-19 cases and 6 deaths in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 226,854 and 2,173 deaths.
One of the problems that has been giving authorities a headache is the lack of vaccines to speed up the vaccination campaign. According to KDCA data, so far, 42.8% of South Korea's 52 million population has received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine while only 17.4% have received two doses.
South Korea's vaccination plan is slow due to vaccine shortages (illustrative photo: BBC).
South Korea has so far ordered more than 193 million doses of vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax. However, due to objective factors, these vaccine batches are still delayed in transportation and have not yet reached the country.
For example, South Korea ordered 66 million doses of Pfizer vaccine this year, but so far the country has only received 17.88 million doses. It is expected that the country will not receive all the vaccines until 2022. South Korea is also planning to buy 30 million more doses of Pfizer to complete vaccination soon and achieve community immunity.
