Virus resurgence This photo shows the campus of Yonsei University in Seoul, where 11 students tested positive for COVID-19, on Nov. 19, 2020. The government said earlier in the day that there were 343 new infections, including 50 from abroad. (Yonhap)
For a country of 51 million people, having only 3 reported local COVID infections in one day is pretty amazing:
This photo, provided by Samsung Electronics Co., shows a medical worker carrying out a new coronavirus test on an employee at a makeshift clinic located at the company’s offices in Suwon, south of Seoul.
South Korea reported 23 more cases of the new coronavirus Monday, with local infections at a nearly three-month low, health authorities said.
The new cases, including 20 imported cases, raised South Korea’s total cases of COVID-19 to 14,389, with local infections at three, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
The number of new COVID-19 cases had been in the 30s since Friday when South Korea reported 36 new virus cases. The number fell to 31 on Saturday and 30 on Sunday.
You can read more at the link, but of the 20 imported cases from Monday, 14 were from Koreans returning to the ROK and 6 were foreigners that arrived and were tested while in quarantine. Even more impressive is that the ROK has had only 301 deaths from the coronavirus.
I believe the ROK demonstrates what competent public health institutions combined with a citizenry that believes in these institutions can accomplishment during a pandemic. This is the complete opposite of what is going on in the U.S. right now.
It looks like what was once called UFG will not happen again this year:
South Korea and the United States appear increasingly likely to scale back or even call off a major combined exercise again due to the new coronavirus, after indefinitely postponing their annual springtime drill earlier this year, sources said Saturday.
The repeated skipping of annual exercises, if realized, is feared to affect the joint combat posture between the two countries, as well as South Korea’s planned takeover of the wartime operational control (OPCON) of its forces from the U.S.
“Both sides share the need to stage the summertime exercise as planned, and we’ve continued consultations on the matter. But things are highly flexible due to the COVID-19 situation,” a defense ministry official said.
Seoul and Washington usually carry out major combined exercises twice a year — in around March and August. But they postponed this year’s springtime exercise due to COVID-19, and it has not been held to date, as the health crisis continues.
You can read more at the link, but basically it comes down to not being able to logistically test and quarantine the thousands of servicemembers who would come to Korea for the exercise.
It looks like foreign residents in South Korea might eventually become eligible for a COVID-18 stimulus payment:
Migrants and Korean activists protest outside Cheong Wae Dae on May 7, urging the local government COVID-19 subsidy be paid to all foreign residents in the country, including those “unregistered.” News1
The South Korean human rights watchdog has stepped in after the governments of Seoul and Gyeonggi Province in March excluded some foreign residents from their disaster relief funds amid COVID-19’s blow to the domestic economy.
The National Human Rights Commission of Korea said Thursday it had advised Seoul mayor Park Won-soon and Gyeonggi provincial governor Lee Jae-myung to subsidize “all foreign residents” in their regions with registered addresses, according to Korean local news outlet Nocut News.
The independent state agency said that after examining experts’ opinions, precedent cases of COVID-19 subsidies allocated by governments, the constitution and local autonomy laws, it concluded that not paying the money to the foreign residents was “discrimination on an unreasonable ground.”
Article 12 and 13 of the local autonomy law, cited by the agency, states that “residents,” who have the right to local government’s administrative benefits that are fair to all, include foreigners who reported their addresses to local government offices.
The Stars & Stripes has an article about the military police patrolling outside of Camp Humphreys trying to enforce USFK’s COVID restrictions:
Spc. Jacob Kincer and Spc. Nicholas Woznick, investigators with the 557th Military Police Company, patrol outside the gates of Camp Humphreys, South Korea, Friday, May 1, 2020.
Routine U.S. military police patrols into the entertainment district outside Camp Humphreys took on new meaning when coronavirus cases, seemingly curbed in South Korea, resurfaced with the loosening of social-distancing measures.
Just a week ago, new cases were being reported in the single digits. Now, that number has grown nearly eight-fold following an outbreak in Seoul’s popular nightlife district in Itaewon. Anyone who visited clubs and bars in the area between April 30 and May 6 is likely to have been exposed to the virus, according to the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.
Courtesy patrols by military police have been standard practice for years. Police routinely visit drinking establishments outside the gates of nearly every U.S. military installation in the country to ensure service members are behaving.
Now, because of the declaration of a public health emergency by U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Robert Abrams, military police are also peering inside restaurants and barbershops to ensure U.S. personnel are complying with health protection condition restrictions.
USFK personnel must avoid gatherings of more than 15 people. Off-base activities such as dining at restaurants and visiting barbershops, bars, movie theaters and amusement parks remain prohibited.
This seems to be a growing belief that this virus was accidentally spilled from the lab in Wuhan:
There is increasing confidence that the COVID-19 outbreak likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, though not as a bioweapon but as part of China’s attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China’s government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.
This may be the “costliest government cover-up of all time,” one of the sources said.
The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus – a naturally occurring strain that was being studied there – was bat-to-human and that “patient zero” worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.
The “increasing confidence” comes from classified and open-source documents and evidence, the sources said. Fox News has requested to see the evidence directly. Sources emphasized — as is often the case with intelligence — that it’s not definitive and should not be characterized as such. Some inside the administration and the intelligence and epidemiological communities are more skeptical, and the investigation is continuing.
So does anyone believe that North Korea has zero COVID-19 cases? Well the WHO does:
North Korea reported earlier this week that despite testing, and amid quarantining, not one confirmed case of the coronavirus has been found. Not one. This, despite the fact that North Korea’s border countries, South Korea and China, have been hit hard by the virus.
“As of 2 April, 709 people — 11 foreigners and 698 nationals — have been tested for COVID-19. There is no report of a COVID-19 case. There are 509 people in quarantine — two foreigners and 507 nationals,” said Edwin Salvador, the WHO representative to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, in an email to Reuters. “Since 31 December, 24,842 people have been released from quarantine, which includes 380 foreigners.”
You can read more at the link, but I think one of the things at least from American point of view that is going to come out of the 2020 Pandemic is the public trusting health organizations less.
Dr. Tara O makes a very compelling case that the international media should be looking at Taiwan as a great example of what to do to combat COVID-19 instead of South Korea:
Taiwan recognized the threat early on and rapidly began to take measures. It inspected and screened travelers from Wuhan, the epicenter of the SARS CoV-2, as early as December 31, 2019. It also actively monitored travelers from Wuhan who had already entered Taiwan on December 20, 2019 and onwards. It had developed screening, testing, and quarantine protocols early based on lessons from the SARS 2003 outbreak. It also engaged in aggressive contact tracing to ensure everyone that came into contact with an infected person was quarantined and tested. On February 6, 2020, Taiwan banned travel from China.
Unlike Taiwan, South Korea never banned travel from China, although the Korean Medical Association (KMA) and the public called for such measures multiple times. South Korea eventually restricted travel from Wuhan on February 2, 2020, but it was not until after China had already quarantined the City of Wuhan on January 23, 2020. KMA, on February 3, made its fifth request to the government to ban entry from China, saying South Korea is losing its “golden time” of prevention, and it will become “regional spreads.” KMA also highlighted inadequate tracking of visitors from China. KMA’s concerns and the government’s inadequate tracing are not reflected in foreign reports that praise South Korea’s tracing.
On January 31, 2020, 11,345 people traveled from China to South Korea. Multiplying by 30 days, that would be more than 340,350 people in one month. If 1% were infected with the coronavirus, that would be 3,403 infected people entering South Korea.
What I think Dr. O is getting after is that the international media has been heaping great praise on President Moon’s response to COVID-19 without mentioning his administration’s previous missteps which also included lack of masks and testing. Even the testing today there is misinformation in the international media about free testing in South Korea, but don’t mention that a sick person needs to have a CT Scan or an X-ray done before a coronavirus test can be conducted. The cost of the CT scan and X-ray could dissuade people from getting tested.
The only reason why I can think of that the international media isn’t instead lavishing praise on Taiwan is because they don’t want to deal with the backlash from China. So the Moon administration has become a better example to damage the Trump administration with. Pointing out the Moon administration’s failings does not help with that goal and thus why they only focus on things that the Moon administration has done right.
Anyone else have any alternate theories on why the international media is not focusing on what the Moon administration has done wrong?
Via reader tip comes this odd story of USFK apparently pulling a fast one on a Korean lab testing people for the coronavirus:
A Seoul-based lab tested 72 American troops positive for the novel coronavirus, but the US military in Korea said they belonged to soldiers stationed elsewhere, a local report said Sunday.
A US hospital at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, where the US military here is headquartered, sent clinical specimens to the lab, and it shared the results with the city of Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, as it was bound by law to do so.
The city pressed the US Forces Korea for more details, but it only confirmed that those diagnosed with COVID-19 were US troops on duty elsewhere and not in Korea.
The local report said the specimens sent to the lab for testing were all numbered, rather than named, so the examinees were not identified.
Upon learning the news, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered every lab in the country not to run virus tests on unidentifiable samples.
You can read more at the link, but but what doesn’t make sense to me is that USFK has been stating that the hospital on Camp Humphreys can do its own coronavirus testing. The hospital can supposedly do up to 80 tests a day so has it reached maximum testing capacity by also testing soldiers from outside of USFK?
The article also says that the city wants every soldier, family member, DOD civilian, and contractor living off-post in Pyeongtaek be tested for the coronavirus. How come the city isn’t forcing every Korean in Pyeongtaek to be tested? Why just USFK personnel? Are they saying USFK personnel are somehow more susceptible to be infected by the coronavirus compared to a Korean? This seems discriminatory to me.
