'3rd Week After Social Distancing Lifted' Surge in Public Mobility... More Movement Than Pre-COVID-19

Last Week Nationwide Mobility Volume 283.25 Million Cases

On the evening of the 23rd of last month, the first weekend after the full lifting of social distancing measures, the streets around Chungjang-ro in Dong-gu, Gwangju Metropolitan City, were bustling with continuous foot traffic from citizens.
Photo by Asia Economy

[Asia Economy Reporter Na Ye-eun] After the government fully lifted the COVID-19 social distancing measures on the 18th of last month, the amount of movement by the public has increased compared to before the COVID-19 outbreak.

On the 11th, the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters of the Ministry of Health and Welfare analyzed and announced data based on mobile phone movement data provided by Statistics Korea. The nationwide movement volume in the third week after lifting distancing measures, last week (May 2?8), was recorded at 283.25 million cases. This is an 11.0% increase compared to the previous week (April 25?May 1), which had 255.16 million cases.

Last week was the first time that nationwide movement volume returned to pre-COVID-19 levels. By region, last week the movement volume in the Seoul metropolitan area was 104.78 million cases, up 3.7% from the previous week, and in non-metropolitan areas it was 142.47 million cases, up 19.3%.

The quarantine authorities stated that the nationwide movement volume during the same period in 2019 (April 25?May 1), before the COVID-19 outbreak, was 279.51 million cases, meaning the current movement volume has increased by 1.3% compared to two years ago.

Son Young-rae, head of the Social Strategy Division at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, said at a briefing on the same day (the 11th), "From the perspective of recovering a new normal life living together with COVID-19, the increase in movement volume is an inevitable phenomenon that cannot be viewed negatively. Movement volume will inevitably continue to increase."

He added, "Since the risk level may also rise during this process, each citizen should strictly follow quarantine rules in daily life, and especially high-risk groups such as the elderly should be sure to get vaccinated."

The basic data used in this analysis counted movement cases when users of S Telecom visited administrative districts other than their actual residential city, county, or district and stayed for more than 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, as of midnight on the same day, the number of new confirmed cases was 43,925, bringing the cumulative confirmed cases to 17,658,794. The number of critically ill patients as of midnight was 383, showing a decreasing trend.

Among the high-risk group aged 60 and over, there were 8,768 confirmed cases, accounting for 20.0% of all confirmed cases. The proportion of those aged 60 and over has been maintained between 16.8% and 23.7% over the past week.