The government believes the third wave of the COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea has passed its peak and now entered a gradual waning stage.

In a Wednesday briefing, Health Ministry official Yoon Tae-ho said that average daily domestic infections have dropped to 833 for the past week compared to over a thousand the previous week. 

Yoon said preemptive testing and the public's cooperation in social distancing were slowly showing effects. But he said that given the wide spread of infections within local communities, the decline in patient numbers will be very slow.

The official also noted a continuous drop in movement, measured by mobile phone data, since Level Two-point-Five distancing was implemented.

However, authorities believe risk factors still remain including cluster outbreaks and virus variants reported in the U.K. and South Africa.

Yoon stressed that minimizing contact in daily life, reducing infections at elderly care facilities and blocking the infiltration of variants will be key to further curbing the spread.  

Sickbed capacity has also improved with no patients waiting for hospitalization more than one day in metropolitan Seoul for the past three days.