DAEGU, South Korea — The usually crowded shopping and partying district in this city of 2.4 million is quieter these days after officials urged citizens to stay home to contain an explosive outbreak of the coronavirus. But many restaurants and bars remain open, waiting for customers who seldom come.

A noodle restaurant put out the sign: “Please come in! We thoroughly disinfect this place twice a day.” In a Starbucks outlet, four workers in surgical masks chanted a cheerful “welcome” when a visitor stepped in. Usually jam-packed with young people, there wasn’t a single customer inside.

Daegu, the center of South Korea’s ballooning coronavirus outbreak, is trying a less rigid approach to keep the health threat at bay: aggressively warning residents to take precautions while staying open for business. It is a stark contrast to the strict lockdown in Wuhan, China, where government restrictions on movement have barricaded most of the city’s 11 million residents in their homes.

[Read: ‘Proselytizing robots’: Inside South Korean church at outbreak’s center.]

“People have been scared and don’t want to venture out,” said Park Seon-gyu, 58, a taxi driver, pointing at roads where the traffic has considerably thinned since the city’s first case of the coronavirus was reported a week ago. “But life has to go on. I have to hit the road to make my hand-to-mouth living.”