Shoppers wearing face masks walk through the Myeongdong shopping district of Seoul on Nov 26, 2020. (PHOTO / AFP)

SEOUL - South Korea reported a record 950 daily coronavirus cases on Saturday, exceeding the late February peak of 909, with the president calling the country’s third wave of COVID-19 an “emergency”.

Of the Friday cases reported by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, 928 were locally transmitted and 22 were imported, bringing the total to 41,736 infections with 578 deaths.

More than 70% the domestically transmitted cases were from Seoul and its neighbouring areas, where about half of the nation’s 52 million people live, amid the latest spread via small, widespread clusters.

“This is indeed an emergency situation,” President Moon Jae-in said, ordering the mobilisation of police, military personnel and public medical doctors in an effort to curb the further spread of the coronavirus.

“We plan to extensively expand drive-through and walk-through coronavirus testing methods ... as preemptive measures to track down infected people and block the spread,” Moon said in a Facebook post.

South Korea is likely to see a further rise in the caseload with significant increases in testing, he added.

The third wave comes despite tougher social distancing rules that took effect on Tuesday, including unprecedented curfews on restaurants and most other businesses. The country has reported about 600 cases a day this week.

The surge has been a blow to South Korea’s vaunted pandemic-fighting system, which used invasive tracing, testing and quarantine to blunt previous waves without lockdowns, keeping daily infections below 50 for much of the summer.

Calling this wave a crisis, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on Friday he would dispatch about 800 military, police and government workers to every district of greater Seoul to help track down potential patients.

New Zealand and the Cook Islands have agreed to open up quarantine-free travel between the two countries starting in the first quarter of 2021, Prime Ministers Jacinda Ardern and Mark Brown said in a joint statement Saturday.

New Zealand officials will work to implement quarantine-free access for visitors from the Cook Islands while final preparations are made for two-way travel, the statement said. The Cook Islands remains free of COVID-19, it said.

This will be the first reciprocal travel bubble New Zealand has formed after closing its borders earlier this year to eliminate local Covid-19 transmission. While New Zealand nationals can visit Australia quarantine-free, a two-way bubble has been delayed due to Australia’s higher tolerance for community transmission.

Currently, anyone entering New Zealand must go into quarantine for two weeks in a government-run isolation facility.

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Singapore

Singapore is tightening border measures in light of the worsening outbreak in Hong Kong, according to the city-state’s health ministry.

All travelers entering Singapore from 11:59 pm on Sunday who have a travel history in the past 14 days to Hong Kong will be required to serve a 14-day stay-home notice at dedicated facilities.

Oman

Tourists traveling to Oman are now exempted from self-quarantine and coronavirus testing before arriving in the Sultanate, the Oman News Agency (ONA) reported on Friday.

"Based on the Health Ministry instructions, it has become possible to exempt tourists from quarantine and PCR tests before coming to the country provided they observe measures including compulsory health insurance that covers the costs of COVID-19 treatment during their stay," the ONA quoted a statement by the Heritage and Tourism Ministry as saying.

The Omani Health Ministry on Thursday revealed that the total confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Sultanate reached 125,669 while the death toll from the virus hit 1,463.

Iran 

Iran reported on Friday 9,594 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, raising the tally in the country to 1,092,617.

It is the first time since Nov. 9 that the announced number of daily COVID-19 cases in Iran, the hardest-hit country in the Middle East region, falls below 10,000.

The pandemic has so far claimed 51,728 lives in Iran, after 232 new deaths related to the coronavirus were registered between Thursday and Friday, said Sima Sadat Lari, spokeswoman of Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education, at her daily briefing.

In addition, 787,853 COVID-19 patients have recovered or been released from hospitals, with 5,760 still in critical condition, she noted.

Iraq

The Iraqi Health Ministry reported on Friday 1,347 new COVID-19 cases, bringing the total nationwide infections to 572,600.

It is the lowest daily increase in the country's coronavirus infections since mid-June as the ministry recorded single-day cases between 2,000 and 5,000 during the period.

The ministry also reported 23 new deaths and 1,930 more recovered cases in the country, raising the death toll from the infectious virus to 12,549 and the total recoveries to 503,897.

A total of 3,837,024 tests have been carried out across the country since the outbreak of the disease in February, with 33,350 done during the day, the ministry said in a statement.

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India

India will deploy its vast election machinery to deliver 600 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to the most vulnerable people in the next six to eight months through conventional cold chain systems, the expert leading the initiative said on Friday.

The government has lined up cold storage facilities with temperatures between 2 to 8 degrees Celsius, said V.K. Paul, who heads the group of experts on vaccine administration for COVID-19 that advises India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Paul said these preparations meet the requirements of what he said were the four emerging candidates in the race for India’s vaccine.

“The four that I can see, including Serum, Bharat, Zydus, and Sputnik need normal cold chain. I see no problem for these vaccines,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker, is already mass producing and stockpiling AstraZeneca’s Covishield shot, while Indian biotech players Bharat Biotech and Zydus Cadila are developing their own vaccine candidates.

And last month, Indian pharmaceutical player Hetero inked a deal with Russia’s RDIF to manufacture over 100 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine per year in India.

The government expects the first approvals “very soon” from the independent drug regulator for emergency use, he said.