Population movement increases under toughest social distancing rules

Jul 30, 2021, 08:46 am

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A street in Myeongdong is relatively uncrowded on July 29, 2021./ Source: Yonhap

AsiaToday reporter Park Ah-ram

It has been three weeks since the government imposed the highest social distancing measures of Level 4 in the Seoul metropolitan area to stem the spread of the virus, but the spread of the virus is not showing signs to slowing down. That’s partly due to the highly contagious delta variant and partly due to increased population movement in the summer vacation season. Experts are calling for lockdown as the situation is not improving.

Korea’s Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters (CDSCH) found that the amount of travel around the country had increased last week when it analyzed mobile phone movement data provided by Statistics Korea. The data recorded 226,040,000 movements around the country on July 19-25, up 0.8 percent from the previous week. Mobile phone movement was up 1 percent from the previous week in the Seoul metropolitan area and up 0.7 percent in the rest of the country. This is 28 percent higher than in the first week of January, when the third pandemic began to wane after reaching its peak.

Regarding the reason for the increased amount of travel under the Level 4 social distancing, Son Young-rae, director of strategy and planning at CDSCH, said, “The main factor is that public fatigue is growing due to extended social distancing measures, and the summer vacation season is seemingly having an impact.”

Experts point out that the fundamental reason is the government’s failure to take a preemptive response at the beginning of the fourth pandemic earlier this month. They called for stronger social distancing measures, including working from home and lockdown.

“The current social distancing rules are weak in terms of blocking infections linked to casual spaces,” said Chun Eun-mi, a professor at Ewha Womans University Medical Center. “The government should impose stricter social distancing rules such as lockdown in order to curb the spread of the virus.”

“If the government imposes weak measures for the sake of self-employed, everyone will suffer from it because they go long-term,” Chun said. “Many infections occur through people’s interactions in their daily routines, therefore the government needs to actively encourage companies to allow their employees work from home or limit the number of people in multi-use facilities to stop the spread,” she said.

#population movement #social distancing rules #Level 4