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City workers hold up signs urging people to wear masks and maintain a distance of 2m from other people outside a street lined with cherry blossoms near Seoul’s Yeouinaru Station on Apr. 5. (Kim Bong-gyu, senior staff writer)

The South Korean government has decided to extend its recommended period of intensive social distancing for two more weeks, postponing its original plan to transition into a system of “lifestyle disease prevention” and resume daily life and economic activities as of Apr. 6. But it turns around people moved around even more during the initial intensive social distancing period than before it started, leading some observers to say the “sit tight” approach can only do so much. A sense of fatigue has built up within the public as COVID-19 continues to inflict social and economic damage.

According to accounts on Apr. 5 from disease prevention officials, the high-intensity social distancing period to prevent transmission of the coronavirus is to be extended for the two weeks from Apr. 6 to 19. The aim is to reduce the average number of new diagnoses per day to 50 or under, while keeping the number of instances involving unknown transmission pathways below 5%. Disease prevention authorities plan to weigh another extension or a resumption of the “lifestyle disease prevention” approach when that period comes to an end. With the weekend bringing 94 new diagnoses on Apr. 4 and 81 on Apr. 5, the target means reducing that amount by half.

The problem is that as the intensive social distancing period wears on, the public’s participation rate has been dropping. On Apr. 4 and 5, many people were observed on spring outings, enjoying the spring sunshine and discount events despite the request to refrain from outdoor activities. A discount event at Lotte World theme park resulted in photos appearing on social media showing packed restaurants and people lined up for rides.

Disease prevention authorities also shared figures from an SKT/Statistics Korea analysis of individual movements, which showed numbers between Feb. 24 and Mar. 3 falling to record lows amid a 38.1% drop from the period before the outbreak. But the amount has slowly increased since then, with movements up by 16.1% during the first week of intensive social distancing from Mar. 23 to 29. After plummeting between Feb. 20 and 29, daily ridership at major stations of Line 2 of the Seoul Subway, including Gangnam and Jamsil, was also found to be climbing again.

Disease prevention officials maintain that the public’s full cooperation is necessary, given the risk of cases exploding again at some point if social distancing practices are relaxed. But they’ve had their hands full continuing to engage the public’s participation.

“Rather than simply telling people that things will be okay if we just hold out for another two weeks, the government needs to also talk about what sorts of changes are needed across society and what kinds of support plans will be made available to the regions suffering the most immediate damage if they want to have an effect,” argued Lee Jae-gap, a professor of infectious diseases at Hallym University Kangnam Sacred Heart Hospital.

By Park Da-hae and Kim Min-je, staff reporters

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