Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun has ordered quarantine authorities and local governments to sternly handle violations of quarantine rules as he announced that the nation’s daily COVID-19 cases hit a new high of one-thousand-241 on Friday. 

Chairing a government meeting of COVID-19 response measures on Friday, Chung also instructed the military and correctional facilities to review their quarantine conditions and boost measures to trace asymptomatic carriers.  

He made the call as he cited the large number of infections were reported at a detention center in Seoul on Thursday.  

Chung urged civil servants all across the nation to join forces to contain the virus during the holiday season so that the government’s tougher quarantine measures implemented for the year-end period will result in a shift from a “winter of ordeal” to a “spring of hope.”