The government is set to announce on Friday adjustments to social distancing levels that will be implemented from next week. 

Health authorities will likely extend the current rules that will expire on Sunday for another two weeks as COVID-19 cases continue to rise. Most experts taking part at a meeting held on Thursday stressed the need for the extension. 

It could be difficult to adjust the rules at the moment as the government is planning to ease social distancing in phases from early November. It plans to shift into a system that focuses more on managing severe cases over the spread of new ones.

COVID-19 figures continue to worsen. The nation’s virus reproduction rate reached one-point-04, rising for the third straight week, with the rate for the Seoul metro area hitting one-point-08.

The rate refers to the number of people a single patient can infect, with a reading over one indicating the virus is spreading.

The government also estimated that the highly transmissible delta variant makes up 99-point-five percent of cases in the nation.