South Korea’s Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun on Friday warned against loosened social distancing amid the COVID-19 outbreak, calling the current situation “the calm before the storm.”

“The spread of COVID-19 infection has clearly slowed in April. But taking a close look, it feels like the calm before the storm,” Chung said at a daily meeting on the country’s disaster response.

Korea reported 22 new cases on Friday, bringing the total number of infections to 10,635.

“The number might be low, but we continue to see patients whose transmission routes are unknown, which I suspect to be transmission through those showing no symptoms,” he added

With a weekslong extensive social distancing campaign in place, Korea, which reached a peak on Feb. 29 with 909 confirmed cases, has seen a slowdown in new infections. The number of new cases in the country hovered around 20 for the fifth straight day.

The government, however, is on alert over the continued influx of cases from overseas, small-scale clusters of infections and growing number of recovered patients testing positive again for the virus.

In addition, Korea had major events -- such as the parliamentary elections held nationwide on Wednesday -- which increased movement of people and physical contact among them this week and last week.

This could lead to an increase in the number of new infections in the coming weeks, given the incubation period of the virus, which can be two weeks or longer.

(laeticia.ock@heraldcorp.com)