S.Korea announces new 5-tier social-distancing regulations

South Korea on Sunday announced a new five-tier social-distancing regulations, replacing the existing three-tier scheme in a bid to minimize the closedown of shops and restaurants that hit hard the owners of microbusinesses and ordinary people.

   South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said in a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters that the government redesigned anti-virus measures in a tailored way to enhance effectiveness from the previous regulations under which the uniform closedown was ordered with no consideration of situation in each facility.

   Chung said facilities would be simply grouped into "priority" and "regular" ones in terms of the application of anti-virus regulations, noting that wearing mask, which had been mandatory in "high-risk" sites, would be applied to all facilities.

   The daily number of COVID-19 cases here stayed above 100 for the fifth consecutive day through Sunday, raising the combined figure of infections to 26,635.