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Incheon International Airport is nearly empty amid the novel coronavirus pandemic on Mar. 25. (Yonhap News)

Starting early on Mar. 27, the South Korean government is planning to require everyone arriving from the US to quarantine themselves for a period of 14 days. This measure was prompted by the skyrocketing number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US and the increasing number of people arriving in South Korea from the US.

South Korea isn’t planning to test all the arrivals from the US, as it’s been doing with people arriving from Europe, because of its limited testing capacity. But that restriction will depend on how the situation plays out. Considering that COVID-19 is a global pandemic, medical experts are speaking of the need to make self-quarantine mandatory for everyone arriving from other countries and to take steps to speed up testing.

On Mar. 25, officials with South Korea’s Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters and with its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KDCD) said that, beginning just after Mar. 27, 12:00 am, people arriving from the US without symptoms will be required to spend two weeks in self-quarantine, regardless of whether or not they’re Korean citizens.

Long-term foreign visitors who are unable to quarantine themselves will be housed at the quarantine facilities being operated by various local governments for people who’ve come into contact with the disease. Those who do have symptoms will be preemptively quarantined at the airport and then tested. All short-term foreign visitors will be tested at airport facilities regardless of whether or not they have symptoms; those who test negative will be admitted into the country and kept under active monitoring until their departure.

So far, the public health authorities regard the COVID-19 threat from the US as being lower than that of Europe and have not decided to test everyone arriving from the US. That contrasts with the approach being taken with people arriving from Europe, who are all required to be tested within three days of arrival, even if they don’t have symptoms.

“There were 86.4 confirmed cases per 10,000 people arriving from Europe in the third week of March, and there were 28.5 cases per 10,000 people arriving from the US in the fourth week of March. Our measures take into account the fact that the disease has been spreading faster in Europe,” explained Yun Tae-ho, head of the disease control team at South Korea’s Central Disaster Response Headquarters.

Another factor is that the authorities don’t think a sudden surge in the testing volume is feasible, given the number of workers that it would involve and the quality of testing that’s required. An average of 2,500 people is arriving from the US every day, two and a half times the 1,000 or so people arriving from Europe.

“A maximum of 20,000 tests can be carried out each day while maintaining the quality of those tests. We’ve assigned relative priorities to testing to ensure we don’t exceed that limit,” said KCDC Director Jung Eun-kyeong.

But that position could change, depending on the spread of COVID-19 in the US. “The most important things are disease control for arrivals and self-quarantine measures, and testing comes after that. In other words, we’re not easing quarantine [for arrivals from the US]. We’ll continue monitoring the incidence rate in the US and the number of confirmed cases per 10,000 people entering the country and consider upgrading to a total testing approach [if the situation gets worse],” Jung said.

Now that COVID-19 has become a pandemic, experts are calling for beefing up mandatory self-quarantine measures. As tests of social welfare facilities and nursing homes in Daegu found an infection rate of 0.7%, while those of employees at psychiatric hospitals found no positive cases, some are saying testing priorities should be rearranged to increase testing efficiency.

“All people entering the country should be placed in a two-week self-quarantine and should be tested if symptoms occur and before their quarantine is ended. It’s important to keep monitoring hospital workers for fevers and to focus testing on people with symptoms,” said Eom Joong-sik, a professor of infectious disease at Gachon University Gil Medical Center.

“The priority at the moment should be people entering the country from overseas. We need to increase the efficiency of testing within the limits of our resources,” said Kim Woo-ju, a professor of infectious disease at Korea University Guro Hospital.

Some experts are urging the government to find ways to make testing faster. “We need to speed up testing by bringing in the FDA-approved diagnosis kit that gives results in 45 minutes or the apparatus developed by a South Korean company that can make a diagnosis in an hour,” Kim said.

“We’re reviewing the need to adopt the American diagnosis kit on a limited basis for preliminary testing before emergency operations, but we don’t think it’s capable of replacing the other diagnosis methods at this point. We’re still in the review phase for the fast diagnostic equipment developed in South Korea, and its efficacy needs to be demonstrated before we move forward,” Jung said.

By Park Da-hae, staff reporter

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