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A club in Itaewon where a confirmed COVID-19 patient recently visited

A resident of Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, who recently tested positive for COVID-19, visited five establishments in Seoul’s Itaewon area on May 2, including nightclubs and bars. As of May 8, a total of 15 additional cases have already been confirmed in connection with the Yongin resident, the city’s 66th case. South Korean disease control authorities have begun investigating the list of people identified in the visitor log of one of the clubs he visited, which amounts to more than 1,500 people.

In a briefing on May 8, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon gave a briefing on May 8, in which he announced that two Gyeonggi residents and 11 Seoul residents who had visited the same Itaewon clubs and bars had tested positive for COVID-19.

A few hours later, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said an additional two cases had been identified. Of the cases identified so far, 12 visited the same club as the Yongin resident, while one case is a co-worker.

“This is a serious case of a transmission cluster amid the country’s attempts to contain COVID-19,” Park said. “If the situation worsens, we may be forced to issue an administrative order that temporarily shuts down businesses where large amounts of people gather, and enact another ban on public assemblies,” the Seoul mayor continued.

South Korea’s central government has already issued an administrative order recommending that all nightlife establishments suspend operations for a month, starting 8pm on May 8.

Although ones of the clubs the patient visited has a visitor log of around 1,500 people for May 2, there’s no guarantee of the visitor log’s accuracy, and many people who visited the club may not be on the list. The Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to cooperate with the KCDC on identifying everyone who came into contact with the patient via CCTV footage and credit card data.

Among the people who may have come into contact with the patient, 114 have been tested at a screening clinic in Seoul as of the afternoon of May 8; 11 of them have tested positive so far. Results for six of them are currently pending. The Seoul Metropolitan Government will place phone calls to over 1,500 people who are on the visitor log, while the governments of Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi Province plan to send text messages to all residents asking anyone who visited the nightlife establishments in question to come forward and get tested.

The patient, currently being identified as No. 66 of Yongin, has been confirmed to have visited nightlife establishments in Itaewon on the night of May 1, around 11 pm, with patient No. 23 of Anyang (Gyeonggi Province). They visited clubs, bars, and convenience stores from around midnight to 4 am the next day.

All the clubs they were visited were gay clubs, sparking some to call for “special enforcement” of nightlife establishments for sexual minorities, to which Park responded, “There’s no need for special measures simply because they’re establishments for sexual minorities.”

The cumulative total of COVID-19 cases within the city of Seoul currently amounts to 648, including the 11 that were identified in connection with the Itaewon clubbing incident.

By Ock Kee-won, staff reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]