A medical worker talks with a visitor from inside the Covid-19 security booth in Seoul, South Korea.
In May, when a coronavirus outbreak hit nightclubs in the South Korean capital of Seoul, health officials quickly released their version of the Navy Seals – elite teams of epidemiologists, specialists in databases and laboratory technicians.
An old-fashioned shoe leather investigation showed the virus went from a nightclub visitor to a college student, to a taxi driver, and then alarmingly to a warehouse worker who worked with 4000 other people.
Thousands of the employee’s colleagues, family members and contacts were approached and 9,000 people were eventually tested. Two weeks later, the warehouse outbreak was all but extinguished and infections were reduced to 152.
The work of these so-called immediate response teams offers a glimpse into how South Korea – once the second worst hit by the coronavirus – has managed to largely stem its spread without the lockdowns that have derailed lives around the world. At a time when cities from Los Angeles to Melbourne to Tokyo are grappling with resurgences, South Korea’s playbook offers one of the most successful plans yet to contain a disease that has killed more than 600,000 people around the world.
The number of new cases in the Asian country – which pioneered the blitz-case strategy – has never fallen to zero, but the number of daily new cases ranged widely from 30 to 60 for two months after peaking to over 800 in February. . Compare that with Los Angeles County, which added 2,014 cases on Thursday alone.
South Korea’s strategy also contrasts with the severe shutdowns instituted in parts of China or the tourism blockade implemented by New Zealand in an attempt to completely eradicate the virus. The Asian nation meticulously targets dangerous hot spots and simply allows most people to lead unhindered lives and businesses.
“We intervene when there is a risk of large-scale transmission and our main job is to find the links between cases and prevent an outbreak,” said Kwon Donghyok, deputy scientific director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of country, which oversees the survey teams. “Finding potential contacts and looking for the cause of infection is the cornerstone of what we do.”
The country now has one of the lowest rates of infections of unknown origin, at around 8%, compared to more than 50% for other countries with a recent resurgence of the virus. Outbreaks have gone from a weekly average of around a dozen to less than six this week.
South Korea has a successful strategy because it learned from the bitter experience of the past, which Western countries did not have the advantage of. The bulk of its more than 14,000 cases and nearly 300 deaths are linked to the outbreak of a religious sect in February and March. Since then, the processes developed after the Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak in the country in 2015 have helped it prevent a second wave of the novel coronavirus.
South Korea’s CDC has around 100 epidemiological investigators, up from just two during the MERS outbreak. During a large potential outbreak, many are removed from the immediate response team, which typically has around six to eight members.
Every day, officials investigate potential outbreaks in a variety of locations, from gatherings of religious groups to badminton clubs or exotic cars. Infections in low-risk settings are first dealt with by municipal health officials, while an immediate response team is called in for high-risk locations.
Other countries have also taken steps to trace contacts and expand testing, with countries like Taiwan and Germany having successfully tested to curb the virus. But some have had more difficulty recently. Infections in Melbourne hit an all-time high this month because its efforts were not properly tailored for its migrant population. India was successful in following up contacts and reducing an epidemic in Mumbai’s Dharavi slum, but replicating that across a country of 1.3 billion people has proven difficult.
“The main strength of South Korea’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is its ability to conduct a thorough epidemiological investigation of each patient,” said Jung Ki-suck, former CDC director and now professor at Hallym University Medical Center , referring to the detailed audience. health tracing carried out by officials. “Epidemiological investigation has never been more important because we can reduce the size of outbreaks and even prevent new cases from appearing.”
Workers spray disinfectant following an outbreak in Seoul’s Itaewon district.
This comprehensive and meticulous investigative strategy paid off when investigators were able to trace the outbreak to the warehouse after tracking an outbreak in nightclubs in the trendy Itaewon neighborhood, said Kwon, who investigated MERS outbreak and was in Rio de Janeiro to investigate a possible Zika outbreak. virus during the 2016 Olympics.
The CDC discovered that a nightclub visitor who was a private tutor transmitted the virus to one of its students. The student, who was unaware of the infection, used a coin-operated karaoke room, transmitting the virus to a singing taxi driver in an adjoining room.
The taxi driver also worked as a part-time photographer and took photos of a birthday party at a buffet restaurant in the area where the distribution center is located.
Using surveillance footage and cellphone recordings, investigators contacted everyone at the restaurant at the time of the birthday party. Among those infected at the restaurant was a woman who had worked a day in the warehouse.
Certainly, some of the tactics used in South Korea, which has a population of around 51 million, might be difficult to replicate in highly populated emerging countries. And the Asian country has benefited from surveillance technology that may not be acceptable to the citizens of many Western countries.
Tracing potential contacts in South Korea involved sifting through hundreds of hours of surveillance camera footage and making cell phone and credit card transactions. So-called video surveillance is ubiquitous in South Korea, as virtually all streets and workplaces have it.
“Other countries just don’t have the capacity to conduct these in-depth patient surveys,” said Jung, the former CDC director. “We have had a lower absolute number of cases than other nations, but more importantly, the social norm, that people accept that their privacy is violated for the wider public interest, has allowed for extensive investigations. , which is simply unimaginable in Western countries. “
South Korea said it expected an increase in cases among construction workers returning from a virus in Iraq and more cases of a Russian ship at one of its ports. Although these are mostly imported cases from outside, the South Korean viral team knows how precarious their earnings are and the importance of vigilance. Many countries, including Asia’s financial capital Hong Kong, have managed to fend off the virus for months, only to see it make a sudden comeback.
“All of the mass infections we’ve witnessed happened in the blink of an eye,” Kwon said. “If we miss a little piece of a link or miss a little detail, we will definitely experience a resurgence of cases.”
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
