A SOUTH Korean court has partially suspended the government's vaccine pass system after it accepted the injunction request filed by 1,023 people against the Seoul city government on Friday.
With the ruling, people are now allowed to enter large supermarkets, department stores and retail stores without providing their Covid-19 vaccination status.
However, the pass system will remain effective for eateries and cafes.
The Korea Times reports that the Seoul Administrative Court ruled to suspend the vaccine pass scheme for big stores in Seoul until it makes a separate ruling on application to nullify the scheme.
The decision stops the vaccine pass system at stores with floor space of 3,000 sq m and above in Seoul.
"Restaurants and cafes have a relatively higher risk of infection than other multiuse facilities because users cannot keep their masks on. But supermarkets and department stores are at lower risk," the court said.
The court has also halted the vaccine pass requirement for children aged 12 to 18 for not only in the stores but also at all multiuse facilities.
The 1,023 people, includes doctors and religious leaders, and they said the effectiveness of the vaccine pass scheme was unclear, not applied consistently and it virtually makes daily life difficult for unvaccinated people and forces them to get a shot.
Meanwhile, the government decided to extend social distancing regulations for three more weeks with business operations restricted after 9pm.
However, authorities eased the rule for the size of private gatherings from four to six.
The Times report said that South Korea's quarantine and treatment schemes will also become more focused on dealing with the Omicron variant, which is expected to become the dominant strain in the country in a couple of weeks.
The decision comes amid concerns over its spread ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which runs from Jan 31 to Feb 2, during which a large number of people will return to their hometowns to visit their relatives.
"Despite the decreased number of infections and serious cases of Covid-19 compared to December, the downward trend has been stalled recently and the Lunar New Year, where massive movement and contacts of people take place, is just two weeks ahead," Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said in a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters.
The government has also announced changes in its quarantine and medical response system to better deal with the Omicron variant.
The government now predicts Omicron will take up more than half of total infections by around Jan 21.
Health experts said if social distancing rules are partially eased, the number of daily infections is expected to surge up to 30,000 by the end of next month and that of critically ill patients to around 1,700 from the current 700.
Under the revised system, when the daily infections exceed 7,000, the self-quarantine period for patients and those who come into close contact with a patient will be shortened from 10 days to seven.
The government will also consider administering Covid-19 vaccines to children aged between five and 11, as well as providing a fourth shot for the medically vulnerable.
"The country's medical system is facing a great challenge," Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol said.
"If you look at the cases of other countries, the number of daily infections increased tens of times when responses were late, leading to a soaring number of hospitalised patients and paralysis of their medical systems."
Meanwhile, Yonhap News Agency reports that the country's cases stayed above 4,000 for the fifth straight day on Sunday.
There were 4,194 new cases, including 3,813 local infections, raising the total caseload to 692,174, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).