The time to lift the indoor masking rules will be announced later this week. 

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency(KDCA) said on Tuesday that the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters will announce the timetable on Friday. 

The KDCA said final decisions on adjusting the indoor mask mandate will be made based on the discussions made during a general meeting of the nation's advisory committee on infectious diseases earlier in the day and following reviews by quarantine authorities. 

Earlier, health authorities had said the indoor masking restrictions will be downgraded to non legally-binding advice through two stages and the first-stage transition will be entered depending on several major criteria including daily tally and the number of serious cases. 

During the Tuesday advisory committee meeting, committee head Jung Ki-suck said three of the four pre-designated criteria have been met, including a drop in weekly cases for the two consecutive weeks and an on-week decline in serious cases with the weekly fatality rate remaining below zero-point-10 percent. 

The other criterion successfully met is the ICU occupancy rate for critical COVID-19 patients under 50 percent for the past four weeks. However, the goal for the rates of booster vaccination among the elderly and those at high-risk facilities in winter remains unfulfilled.