SKorea reports 76 new cases

SEOUL –– South Korea on Sunday reported 76 new coronavirus cases and three more deaths, a fall in new cases to double-digits for the first time in more than three weeks.

South Korea, which has the highest number of cases in Asia after China, now has a total of 8162 confirmed infections and 75 deaths, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said (KCDC).

South Korea has been experiencing a downward trend in new cases and the latest numbers are significantly lower than the peak of 909 cases reported on February 29 and down from the 107 recorded on Saturday.

Daegu city recorded 41 of the new cases, the epicentre of the country’s outbreak.

A total of 120 patients were released from hospitals and for the third day in a row the daily number of those recovered exceeded that of new confirmed cases since South Korea’s first case was confirmed on January 20.

Starting yesterday, South Korea began to subject visitors from France, Germany, Britain, Spain and the Netherlands to stricter border checks, after imposing similar rules for China, Italy and Iran suffering a major outbreak.

Apart from measuring temperature at the airport, visitors from those countries now need to download an app the South Korean government rolled out to report whether they have any symptoms related to the virus everyday.

South Korea has been testing hundreds of thousands of people and tracking potential carriers such as detectives, using cell phone and satellite technology.