South Korea will exempt fully-vaccinated people against the COVID-19 from the 14-day mandatory self-quarantine early next month, the health authorities said Wednesday.
Yoon Tae-ho, a senior official at the Central Disaster Management Headquarters, told a press briefing that the fully-inoculated people will be exempt from self-isolation when they test negative and have no symptoms even after coming in close contact with the infected patients.
Those who have close contact with infections are currently required to be self-isolated for two weeks.
The self-quarantine exemption will begin on May 5.
Yoon, however, noted that the exempted people will be required to be monitored and take two COVID-19 tests for 14 days.
The exemption will be subject to those who go abroad after completing the two-dose inoculation and return home, but not to those who came from countries, where more contagious COVID-19 variants spread, such as South Africa and Brazil, Yoon said.
The fully-vaccinated people refer to those who received their final jabs of the vaccines at least two weeks earlier.
It is known that it takes about two weeks to have antibodies after vaccinations.
The country’s drug safety agency has approved vaccines from AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.
South Korea clinched purchase deals with Novavax and Moderna as well as the three drug makers.
According to the latest tally, the country administered COVID-19 vaccines to 2,586,769, or about 5 per cent of the 52 million population, with 148,282 fully vaccinated.
Xinhua/NAN
