Fortunately it appears so far that no one else on the plane was infected:
USFK commander Gen. Robert Abrams said Wednesday that he would not yet lift the military restrictions, which include a ban on nonessential travel off base and dining in at local restaurants and bars.
Many of the infections reported in recent weeks have been imported from abroad.
The American sailor landed at Osan Air Base on the charter flight on Wednesday and was transported to a barracks on Camp Humphreys for a mandatory 14-day quarantine, according to a press release from U.S. Forces Korea.
“Since testing positive, the sailor has been moved to Camp Humphreys’ isolation barracks designated for confirmed COVID-19 cases,” the command said.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but this is a perfect example of why the 14 day quarantine is so important.
This is probably going to be a reoccurring reality with the opening of clubs, dealing with cluster infections:
Thirteen more cases of the novel coronavirus were confirmed Friday, associated with a patient who visited clubs and bars in Seoul’s popular multicultural neighborhood of Itaewon over the weekend.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said that 14 of the patient’s contacts, including three foreign nationals and one Army officer, have so far tested positive for COVID-19. All patients are aged between 19 and 37.
The 29-year-old patient, whom health authorities consider the first patient in the cluster infection, visited five clubs and bars in Itaewon from Friday night to the early hours of Saturday last week.
Twelve of the 13 new cases were those who had visited the Itaewon clubs, with the number feared to rise, considering that at least 1,510 people were estimated to have visited the five nightlife establishments including King Club, Trunk Club and Club Queen.
Yonhap News
You can read more at the link.
If you haven’t heard this yet, the state of Maryland bought $9 million in test kits and used the National Guard to defend the cargo shipment from being taken by the federal government:
Maryland authorities were so concerned about the federal government seizing a shipment of COVID-19 tests destined for the state that they made special arrangements to receive and guard the tests until they could be distributed, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan said Thursday.
Hogan cited the fate of 3 million N95 masks purchased by the state of Massachusetts — all of which were confiscated in March by the federal government at the port of New York — as the main reason for taking extra precautions to secure his state’s order of 500,000 COVID-19 testing kits from South Korea.
ABC News
You can read more at the link, but the governor’s wife is a Korean-American who helped facilitate the purchase.
Here is a long, but interesting read from Australia’s Daily Telegraph about a leaked document supposedly prepared by western governments about the possibility of the coronavirus being unintentionally released from the Wuhan lab:
China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion.
The 15-page research document, obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, lays the foundation for the case of negligence being mounted against China.
It states that to the “endangerment of other countries” the Chinese government covered-up news of the virus by silencing or “disappearing” doctors who spoke out, destroying evidence of it in laboratories and refusing to provide live samples to international scientists who were working on a vaccine.
Daily Telegraph
You can read more at the link, but even though there is no direct evidence yet that it was unintentionally released from the lab, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing that way laid out in the article. Unfortunately it appears that circumstantial evidence is only relevant depending on ones politics.
Another step towards normalcy in South Korea:
The government has decided to further loosen its guidelines on social distancing, beginning Wednesday, amid clear signs of a slowdown in the number of new COVID-19 infections here, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said Sunday.
Korea Times
Under its “Distancing in daily life” plan, the government will allow the phased reopening of facilities that have been shut down amid the coronavirus outbreak, Chung said.
The government will also allow meetings and events to be held as long as participants abide by some basic quarantine guidelines.
You can read more at the link.
The ROK government plans to stimulate the economy by giving additional money to pensioners and those on disability:
The government began offering emergency disaster relief funds to some 2.8 million households, Monday, as part of efforts to minimize the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic by boosting consumption, according to the Ministry of Interior and Safety.
Korea Times
Eligible households include those living off the government’s livelihood support, the basic pension or disability programs.
Those households can receive cash payouts up to 1 million won ($816) without going through a separate application process.
The amount depends on the number of family members ― 400,000 won for single-person households, 600,000 won for two-member households, 800,000 won for three-member households and 1 million won for households with four or more family members.
You can read more at the link.
This month South Korean children will be heading back to school as early as May 13th:
South Korea on Monday announced plans to reopen schools starting next week, more than two months after schools were closed in a precautionary measure against the new coronavirus that has infected more than 10,000 here.
“Starting on May 20, which is two weeks after key holidays in May, we will push to (reopen schools) in a phased and sequential process,” Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said at a press briefing.
Under the plan, high school seniors will return to school on May 13, while other grades will return to school gradually in the following weeks.
Students in grade 2 of high school, grade 3 of middle school and grades 1 and 2 in elementary schools will return on May 20, while those in grade 1 of high school, grade 2 of middle school and grades 3 and 4 in elementary schools will go back on May 27. Students in grade 1 of middle school and grades 5 and 6 in elementary school will return on June 1.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
This will be a big step reopen schools, not so much for the students who really aren’t effected by the coronavirus, but the teachers and family members they may spread the virus to:
The government appears to be in a dilemma over whether to resume normal classes at schools, according to education officials Tuesday, as the number of new coronavirus infections has been on a downward trend.
Korea Times
Officials want to open schools as quickly as possible and return teachers and students to classrooms. But at the same time, they are equally concerned that if they open the schools too soon, they could become a hotbed for the highly contagious virus as students come into contact with one another.
As the number of newly confirmed daily cases of COVID-19 has stayed around 15 or less for 10 consecutive days, many educators, teachers and students expect to see schools resuming normal classes. Schools have been closed since March 2, when the new school semester was originally scheduled to commence.
The Ministry of Education said Tuesday that it had held a videoconference with local education superintendents to come up with a detailed plan for any reopening. During the conference, Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae and the 17 regional superintendents discussed how to resume normal classes while preventing them from becoming hotbeds for the coronavirus.
A decision is expected between May 3 and 5, after the government decides whether to further ease social distancing next week.
You can read more at the link.
