[Photo] Silence Descends on Myeongdong

The streets of Myeongdong, Seoul, were deserted on the 11th as the government announced a three-week extension of the current social distancing measures and the ban on private gatherings of five or more people. Kwon Deok-cheol, the first deputy head of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, explained the reason for extending the distancing measures during a Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures meeting held at the Government Seoul Office, stating, "The average number of confirmed cases over the past six weeks has been in the high 500s, and the infection reproduction number has remained around 1 for the past four weeks, indicating that the scale of the outbreak is not decreasing." /Reporter Moon Ho-nam munonam@