The South Korean government announced on Friday it will begin allowing a limited number of fans back into baseball and football stadiums as soon as Sunday, under new rules aimed at preventing the spread of the COVID-19.

Fans will be allowed to attend Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) games starting on July 26, and Korea Professional Football League (K League) matches starting on August 1, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said at a government meeting.

Both leagues will only be allowed to sell ten percent of the seats available at any given game, he added.

"Many citizens who have been cheering via online are looking forward to entering the stadium again," Chung said, while asking for patience with efforts to balance anti-virus measures with reopening.

The news came amid the KBO and K League clubs "dealing with financial hardships without any gate revenue this year," Yonhap News reported.

The coronavirus has forced ten KBO teams to play without spectators ever since the season restarted on May 5 instead of March 28 as planned.

The K league resumed on May 8 also behind the closed doors with attendees wearing masks, attracting 3.4 million viewers on Twitter with a further 234,000 on YouTube, the South Korean top football league has confirmed.

Inside the stadiums, the K league forbids players' from handshaking before the match and uses Video Assistant Referee (VAR) and artificial crowd noise, which was recorded in previous games to sound like there were fans, instead of playing a game in silence.

According to a health and safety manual for fans issued by the KBO, spectators will be required to wear masks and sit apart after they go through temperature checks.

Cheering, chanting and any other types of celebration that my include contact will be limited.

To minimize person-to-person contact, tickets can only be purchased online so that health authorities will be able to trace contact information in case of positive COVID-19 tests.

(With input from Reuters)