South Korea decided Saturday to ease social distancing rules from next week, though it will maintain a ban on the gatherings of five or more people.

The government's five-tier social-distancing guidelines will be lowered to Level 2, the third-highest, in the Seoul metropolitan area and to Level 1.5 in other areas from Monday, according to the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters.

In the Seoul area, business hours for restaurants, cafes, indoor sports facilities and karaoke bars will be extended by one hour until 10 p.m., and six high-risk entertainment facilities such as nightclubs will also be allowed to operate until 10 p.m.

In other areas, the restriction on business hours will be lifted for restaurants, cafes and other small businesses, but entertainment facilities will be permitted to run until 10 p.m.

Movie theaters, internet cafes, study rooms, amusement parks, discount outlets and beauty salons will be allowed to operate without restriction on business hours across the country under the eased quarantine rules.

However, the health authorities decided to keep in place the ban on the gatherings of five or more people, except for direct family members, as it was considered helpful for preventing small cluster infections.

"It is a decision that we made while adhering faithfully to principles but in consideration of public fatigue," said the country's Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun, according to Yonhap News Agency, during a meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters.

"We also decided to ease restrictions on small merchants and other businesses who have cooperated with antivirus efforts despite excruciating pain," he continued, noting the difficulty in finding the right "balance between the anti-virus fight and livelihoods."

On Saturday, the country reported 362 more cases of COVID-19 during the previous 24 hours, including 345 local infections, raising the total number of infections to 83,199, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.  Seven more patients died, taking the death toll to 1,514.

(With input from Xinhua)