South Korea sees record Covid cases ahead of major holiday period

Seoul, Sep 15 (EFE).- The capital region of South Korea reported its highest number of Covid-19 infections of the pandemic on Wednesday, worrying health authorities on the eve of one of the main holiday periods in the country.

South Korea recorded 2,057 new cases detected as of midnight on Tuesday, of which 1,656 corresponded to the area formed by Seoul, the nearby city of Incheon and the surrounding province of Gyeonggi, which represents more than 80 percent of the total and a record high.

Seoul alone reported 807 infections, also a daily record since Covid-19 was first detected in the country in January 2020, according to data released by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

The figures are worrying as Saturday marks one of the main holiday periods of the country called Chuseok, a festival to celebrate the harvest and honor ancestors in which a large number of people travel from the capital region, where more than half of the national population lives, to other areas of the country.

South Korea is one of the countries that has best controlled its epidemic (it has recorded only 2,380 deaths and some 252,000 infections in total), but the shortage in the global supply of vaccines and the spread of the Delta variant have complicated the situation for the country, which has been registering more than 1,000 daily cases since July.

As of Wednesday, 67.3 percent of the 51 million South Koreans have received one dose of a vaccine and 40.3 percent are fully vaccinated.

However, the government expects to reach 70 percent fully vaccinated by the end of October, when it hopes to begin to ease restrictions. EFE

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