President Moon Jae-in has called on health authorities to expand contact tracing on COVID-19 infection routes to curb an ongoing uptick in daily infections in and around the capital of Seoul.

The president's remarks come after the number of daily infections reached one-thousand-212 on Tuesday, the second highest tally since peaking at one-thousand-240 last December during the previous third wave of the pandemic.

Presiding over a meeting on COVID-19 response on Wednesday, Moon urged local governments to shore up their capacity to deal with the surge and also to mobilize additional essential personnel as necessary, including police and military officials and civil servants.

Moon also ordered heads of local governments in areas reporting a rapid rise in cases to devise measures to mitigate a further spread of the virus.

The president pledged that there will be zero tolerance for businesses that violate social distancing mandates, emphasizing tougher regulations to take effect on Thursday that will force shops and businesses to shut down for ten days if they breach government protocols.