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South Korean President Moon Jae-in holds a pan-government meeting aimed at countering the novel coronavirus outbreak at the Central Government Complex in Seoul on Feb. 23. (Blue House photo pool)

On Feb. 23, the South Korean government elevated its alert level for the novel coronavirus from “orange” to “red,” the highest of four levels. Now that the alert level is at red, the government has decided to delay the start of the spring semester at schools around the country for a week. This is the first time in 11 years that the government has issued a red alert since the H1N1 swine flu outbreak in 2009.

“The government has raised the alert level to ‘red,’ the highest level, on the recommendation of infectious disease experts, which will enable us to greatly strengthen our response system,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in said during a pan-government meeting aimed at countering the outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The meeting was held at the Central Government Complex in Seoul on Sunday.

“The massive cluster of infections we’re seeing in the Shincheonji church represents a complete change of the situation. We must not hesitate in taking tough, even unprecedented, measures, without being constrained by regulations,” Moon said, while calling for all government ministries to make every effort to combat the disease.

South Korea’s Ministry of Education announced on Sunday that it was delaying the beginning of the spring semester — originally scheduled for Mar. 2 — by nine days at all kindergartens; elementary, middle, and high schools; and special education schools. “We will be closely following the spread of the infection and swiftly taking additional measures if necessary. The Ministry of Employment and Labor will be taking measures to ensure that workers can take leave to care for family members, and government agencies will be working together to help out low-income families and families in which both parents are working,” said Education Minister Yoon Eun-hae.

In the meeting, the government also decided to set up the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters under the prime minister, to restrict or shut down group activities and facilities used by large groups of people, to preemptively quarantine and test all members of the Shincheonji religious sect in the Daegu area, to test everyone in Daegu with suspicious symptoms, and to arrange 1,000 hospital beds to prepare for the possibility of more infections.

The reason the government raised the alert level to “red” after keeping it at “orange” until Sunday morning is because the rapid spread of the coronavirus since the outbreak at Shincheonji’s Daegu branch convinced indicated that it’s only a matter of time before COVID-19 spreads around the country and that there’s a critical need for preemptive measures.

The Blue House and government’s original idea was to control the disease while also sustaining economic activity. The government was trying to exercise caution by nominally holding the alert level at “orange” while taking tough measures that basically corresponded to a “red” alert. Raising the alert to “red,” the government feared, could have severe economic consequences if South Korea were regarded as a contagion risk, which could lead other countries to implement an entry ban on South Koreans.

But on Sunday, Moon signaled that the government was shifting its stance and would now be concentrating all its resources on fighting the disease. “The COVID-19 situation has reached a critical watershed. The next few days are a critical period,” he said.

Health and Welfare Minister Park Neung-hoo explained the rationale for elevating the alert level as follows: “The appearance of confirmed cases continues to be focused on a specific religious group. For now, we’re in the early stage of the disease [spreading] regionally, not nationally, but we need to take preemptive measures.”

“Local governments not only in Daegu but around the country have temporarily closed Shincheonji facilities and are taking steps to survey and monitor all members of the organization. This isn’t an attempt to suppress the freedom of religious activity, but is rather an unavoidable measure aimed at protecting the safety of the community,” Moon said, while asking Shincheonji members for their cooperation. Moon went on to ask other religious groups as well as secular organizations to refrain from holding events that bring large numbers of people together in close quarters.

With the alert level elevated to red, the highest level, the biggest difference in terms of disease control is the shift from a strategy of containment, which is focused on blocking the entry of the disease from other countries, to a strategy of mitigation, which seeks to slow community transmission of the disease and minimize serious cases and fatalities. But the government means to pursue both these strategies through a “two-track” approach. Cases of local transmission with an undetermined source are being detected sporadically, but there’s still a major risk of infected individuals arriving from China and other countries.

As a result, the government will be maintaining its current strategy of blocking the influx of the disease from the outside by requiring special entry procedures for people arriving from China and minimizing travel to China and other countries facing a major outbreak of the disease. In order to also reduce the damage caused by community transmission, the government will be focusing on identifying cases soon after infection and providing treatment that’s appropriate for the symptoms by keeping patients with respiratory ailments separate from other patients to prevent transmission in hospitals.

Raising the alert level to “red” could begin to impact citizens’ everyday lives in ways that include restricted transportation. The government has asked Daegu residents to stay at home as much as possible and avoid traveling to other parts of the country for at least two weeks. The government could also force schools and private academies to go on holiday and restrict the use of mass transit, airplanes, trains, and ships. A further option is to ban large cultural and sporting events and to advise companies to stop selling domestic and international travel packages.

By Lee Wan and Park Su-ji, staff reporters

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