Anchor: South Korea has classified social distancing into three stages according to the severity of COVID-19 infections. The latest number of new coronavirus cases came in slightly below 50, but clusters of infections continue to be spotted in the Seoul metro area and a number of regions around the country.
Choi You Sun reports.

Report: The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters on Sunday announced details of a new three-phase social distancing system.

The current "distancing in daily life" measures will now be classified as the lowest phase-one social distancing, where the degree of sporadic clusters of COVID-19 infections can be handled by the medical system.

In phase two, the level of infections surpasses the manageable capacity throughout a region, and in phase three, a number of clusters are reported within a community, suggesting an outbreak.

Authorities plan to adjust the phase of social distancing depending on the daily increase in number of infections, the percentage of cases with no known infection route, the status of a cluster under state monitoring, and the ratio of cases under state control.

According to authorities, 42 new cases of COVID-19 infections were reported as of 12:00 a.m. Monday, raising the total to 12-thousand-757.

Although the daily increase in infections reached almost 50, most of the 21 out of 30 local cases were traced to religious groups in the Seoul metropolitan area.

Meanwhile, the number of COVID-19 infections around the world exceeded ten million, with the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reporting over ten-point-01 million as of 12:30 p.m. Monday. The global death toll was 501-thousand-281.
Choi You Sun, KBS World Radio News.