South Korea's central epidemic prevention strategy headquarters reported on the 18th that there were more than 100000 new coronavirus confirmed cases in the country for the first time compared with the previous day, setting a new high in the number of confirmed cases since the epidemic in the country. However, after comprehensively considering the people's livelihood and epidemic prevention, the South Korean government announced a slight relaxation of epidemic prevention measures on the same day. It is reported that South Korea added about 109800 new cases of confirmed diagnosis on the 18th, with a cumulative diagnosis of more than 1.75 million cases; There were 45 new deaths and a total of 7283 deaths. The mutant strain COVID-19 has become the main epidemic strain in South Korea, causing the recent epidemic to rebound. According to the prediction of the epidemic prevention department of South Korea, the number of newly diagnosed cases in South Korea may reach 130000 to 170000 by the end of this month. South Korean Prime Minister Kim Phu Hyun said at a meeting of the central disaster safety response headquarters on the 18th that after comprehensively considering the current situation of people's livelihood and economy, the government will fine tune the epidemic prevention measures within the range that the medical system can bear. The new epidemic prevention measures allow the daily closing time of restaurants, cafes and other places to be extended from 21:00 to 22:00, and the maximum number of private parties remains at 6. The epidemic prevention measures will be implemented from the 19th to the 13th of next month. Jin Fuqian also called on the people to actively vaccinate the new coronavirus vaccine. As of 0:00 on the 18th, 86.3% of South Korea's population had completed two doses of Xinguan vaccine and 58.6% had been vaccinated with booster vaccine, according to the data of the South Korean Xinguan vaccine promotion group. In November 2021, South Korea launched the "phased recovery of daily life" epidemic prevention system. Since then, COVID-19 has rebounded, and the new crown severe case data has reached a record high. According to the relevant plans of the South Korean Central Disaster Safety response headquarters, if the utilization rate of domestic intensive care beds exceeds 75%, the government will suspend the measures to resume daily life and start the "emergency plan" for epidemic prevention. (Xinhua News Agency)