Tag: coronavirus

It seems that South Korea has reached the stage where authorities are quickly reacting to cluster infections of the coronavirus before they become major outbreaks like we saw in Daegu:

Another cluster transmission of the new coronavirus has infected 40 followers of a protestant church in Seongnam, just south of Seoul, municipal government said Monday, raising an alarm bell on the steady spread of cluster infections in the capital area.

The city government of Seongnam said 40 members of Grace River Church, including the pastor and his wife, have tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a Sunday service about a week ago.

Six other people who had come into contact with the infected church members have also been confirmed as coronavirus patients, it noted.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I have noticed more articles in the U.S. media highlighting South Korea’s success testing for the coronavirus:

Dr. Ogan Gurel, who got his medical degree from Columbia in New York and moved to Seoul 10 years ago, cites drive-by testing as one of “a panoply of measures” designed to stop the virus from overwhelming this country of 51 million people.

“There is no silver bullet,” says Gurel, who teaches medicine and provides scientific advice. “Individually, people might suffer, but in aggregate they end up with qualitative stabilization.” That is to say, for the overall population the disease is brought under control.

The proof is in the numbers showing new cases in South Korea decreasing steadily–just 110 on Thursday, the lowest in more than two weeks, while 177 were declared cured and sent home. All told, the number of cases totals 7,979, but the general feeling sense is the worst is over.

“Korea is setting a good example for the U.S.,” said Jang Sung-eun, who still rides the subways to work every day while many of her colleagues try to work from home. “They say we Koreans are rather effective in dealing with the problem.”

Such guarded optimism reflects a discernible shift in national mood from the near-panic that engulfed the country after the virus was discovered to be emanating from a church in the city of Daegu, 170 miles southeast of Seoul. The church was one of dozens run by the secretive Shincheonji sect, whose leader, Lee Man-hee, has proclaimed himself the embodiment of Jesus Christ.

“There was some resistance among them to testing,” says Gurel, but by now almost all the sect’s 230,000 members have been checked. Most of those suffering from the disease were members of the church or caught the virus from members who may have passed it on through two or three others, who in turn transmitted it to still more contacts.

Korean self-discipline and community cohesiveness explain much of the success in coming to terms with an illness that remains almost out of control elsewhere.

Daily Beast

You can read more at the link, but these articles don’t mention how travel from China was not restricted which helped the spread of the virus in South Korea. Likewise it took time for South Korea to get their testing and quarantine strategy in place after the initial shock of the mass infections in Daegu.

The U.S. is now experiencing the initial shock Koreans felt last month and now authorities are scrambling to implement their own testing and quarantine strategy. There is definitely best practices that can be learned from South Korea, but they will have to be adapted to deal with a far larger & diverse population, spread out over a huge landmass, with different privacy laws.

This idea first implemented in South Korea just make a lot of sense for a variety of reasons if there are enough test kits to support it:

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday introduced drive-through tests as part of efforts to fight the coronavirus, a week after he questioned the effectiveness of the method widely used in South Korea.

Trump made the announcement during a White House press conference at which he declared a national emergency to fight the growing outbreak in the United States.

“We’ve been in discussions with pharmacies and retailers to make drive-through tests available in the critical locations identified by public health professionals,” he said. “The goal is for individuals to be able to drive up and be swabbed without having to leave your car.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Predictably the Chinese government is trying to deflect their own incompetence in handling the coronavirus by resorting to nationalism and blaming the United States:

Something that had been merely suggested before has now been blown wide into the open in China.

A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, tweeted yesterday that “it might be the US army” that brought the coronavirus to China, giving an official boost to a conspiracy theory that had been allowed to circulate on Chinese social media for weeks. The conspiracy posits that 300 athletes from the US military who in October attended the 7th Military World Games in Wuhan, where the epidemic first broke out, were infected with the virus, thereby spreading it in China.

Zhao’s comment accompanied a video from a US congressional hearing this week on the country’s response to the epidemic. Robert Redfield, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said in the video that some patients who were previously diagnosed to have died from the flu were found to have actually died from the coronavirus. The video began trending on Chinese social network Weibo, with many commenting that they now believe firmly that the US had covered up facts related to the epidemic.

Quartz

You can read more at the link, but President Trump should speak up about this at some point because clearly the Chinese government is trying to blame the U.S. for something their incompetence allowed to happen.

U.S. Ambassador Harry Harris visited Incheon International Airport on Wednesday to see how fever checks on U.S.-bound passengers are going, a day after South Korea’s government took over the anti-coronavirus screening mission from airlines.

Harris visited a boarding gate in the Second Terminal of the airport, west of Seoul, and observed officials taking the temperatures of passengers of an Atlanta-bound Korean Air plane and received a briefing about the screening process.

“Terrific visit to Incheon Airport to see 1st-hand ROKG measures to combat COVID-19 & mgmt of travelers to USA. Impressed w/ROK’s robust & comprehensive response efforts to limit the virus’ spread. Thanks to all for the hard work,” he wrote in his Twitter account afterwards. 

On Tuesday, the government said it will take over the anti-coronavirus screening mission from airlines and conduct health examinations on passengers boarding flights to the U.S. from the Incheon airport and Gimhae International Airport in the southeastern city of Busan.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Who knows what is true in this report, but I think everyone finds it hard to believe that North Korea has no coronavirus cases:

Hundreds of North Korean soldiers have reportedly died from the coronavirus — and thousands of others are being quarantined.

But the secretive nation’s leaders are sticking to the official narrative that the global epidemic has not reached them.

According to Daily NK, a South Korean news organization, the COVID-19 virus killed 180 North Korean soldiers in January and February and has sent another 3,700 into quarantine. And according to South Korea’s government-backed Yonhap News Agency, almost 10,000 people have been quarantined over coronavirus fears, but nearly 4,000 have been released since they didn’t present symptoms.

But the North Korean government line hasn’t changed. The cloistered nation has remained stubbornly resistant to providing transparent information about the reported outbreak in the country.

Business Insider

You can read more at the link.

There has been outbreak of the coronavirus in Seoul from a call center:

 With at least 50 cases, a call center in southwestern Seoul emerged as the biggest COVID-19 infection cluster here Tuesday, triggering concerns over potential mass transmission in the metropolitan area that is home to 25 million, or nearly half of the country’s population.

A high-rise in the neighborhood of Sindorim was closed and disinfected late Monday after workers at a call center on its 11th floor were confirmed as patients, according to Guro Ward, which oversees Sindorim.

In a meeting with other provincial officials, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said 64 cases occurred from the outbreak, while the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) earlier said 50 cases have been traced to the call center.

A total of 46 employees who live in Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province have tested positive, in addition to four family members of them. The KCDC said all diagnosed employees worked on the 11th floor, without wearing masks.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.