<Anchor> The



social distancing step in the Seoul metropolitan area has been raised to 2.5 levels since the 8th, Tuesday.

Today (12th) is the fifth day, and the number of confirmed cases continues to increase as you can see.

Health officials expect the 2.5-step effect to appear early next week, so the next three or four days will be a real hurdle.

If the distance effect does not appear as expected, that is, if the spread does not break, there is no way to avoid the three-level upgrade.



Next is reporter Nam Joo-hyun.



<Reporter> The



health authorities explained that the reason why the number of confirmed cases exploded yesterday was that large-scale group infections occurred in various places.



In addition to this, another reason is that the distancing effect is not sufficiently displayed, and he predicted that until the 2.5-step upgrade effect appeared, confirmed cases similar to yesterday could continue to appear.



The problem is that, according to the health authorities' own analysis, the effect of distancing so far does not meet expectations.



In fact, it was upgraded to the second stage on the 24th of last month, five days after the 1.5 stage upgrade, and more than two weeks have passed since then, but the spread has not stopped.



[Lim Sook-young / Head of the Central Defense Countermeasures Headquarters: The level of distancing has been raised, but the amount of movement of the people at the end of the year has not decreased significantly.]



Health authorities are expecting the effect of the 2.5-stage upgrade to occur around next Tuesday at the earliest

.

Whether it will appear is unknown.



Today's Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters meeting showed that the opinion to upgrade to the third stage seems to be based on the judgment that the 2.5 stage has limitations.



[Sae-gyun Jeong/Prime Minister: It is a very serious and emergency situation.

If the current spread cannot be broken, the upgrade to three stages of distancing will be inevitable.] The



average number of confirmed patients per day in the last week is 690, and if the preemptive examination is started at the temporary screening inspection office next week, the average of 800 persons is raised in three stages. As it is expected to be over, the authorities' concerns about the 3rd stage upgrade are bound to deepen.



(Video coverage: Kim Min-cheol, video editing: Park Ki-deok)