Mandatory outdoor mask rules for those who had received their first shots of COVID-19 vaccines could be reintroduced if the country sees a rise in new Coronavirus variant cases, South Korea Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, said on Tuesday.

Starting from July 1, South Korea plans to allow people administered with their first vaccine doses to travel outdoors without masks, as part of the government’s new COVID-19 guidelines emphasizing incentives for vaccinated people.

The prime minister, however, stated that the government “cannot but make mask-wearing rules mandatory again’’ in the case of new COVID-19 variant cases rise, amid concerns over a steady rise in cases of the highly contagious Delta variant.

During the period of June 20, and June 26, the number of confirmed cases of strains from Britain, South Africa, Brazil, and India came to 267, bringing the cumulative number of confirmed cases of variants to 2,492, health authorities said.

“The risk of contamination could only rise following the introduction of the revised social distancing guideline,“ Kim said at a daily interagency meeting on the government’s COVID-19 response.

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Kim stressed that other nations with high rates of inoculations were also tightening their COVID-19 responses again, explaining that the number of daily new patients in Britain, which dropped to as low as the 1,000 level, surged back to around 20,000.

The prime minister stated that South Korea could also see a potential surge in new cases and instructed health authorities to prepare special response measures in line with the introduction of the new guidelines in July.