The U.S. and South Korea confirmed
their first coronavirus patients on the same day.
So, how did South Korea contain its outbreak
while cases of new infections in the U.S. have soared?
And what can people in the United States
learn from South Koreans?
We explore how South Korea's huge
test, trace and treat program,
and a little help from K-pop megastars BTS,
meant the country flattened the curve of coronavirus
in a way that few others have.
South Korea saw its first case
of coronavirus on January 20th.
A 35-year-old Chinese woman flew in from Wuhan, China.
She was isolated upon entry into Seoul,
but in late February, cases of the infection
ballooned from fewer than 50 to over 5,000.
This happened in the space of 14 days.
There were 909 new cases of the novel coronavirus
on a single day during the peak.
South Korea had the highest number of cases
of COVID-19 in Asia outside of China.
The outbreak was traced back to a single patient:
patient 31.
She had traveled to crowded spots,
including this secretive church
in the southeastern city of Daegu.
The church cluster was at the epicenter
of South Korea's outbreak by March 18.
The impact was far-reaching.
- After an brief delay,
South Korea got to work in containing the outbreak
in a way that almost no other country has.
Remember, the U.S. and South Korea detected
their first cases of COVID-19 on the same day.
On March 27, South Korea reported
under 140 COVID-19 deaths.
The U.S. reported over 1,600.
How did things turn out so differently in the two countries?
A difficult issue for the United States is the lack
of centralized messaging from the government
to the general public.
- Centralized communication
in the Asian democracy was keeping the public well-informed.
It came in the form of emergency cell alerts
and two detailed daily briefings with health officials.
We're not seeing any sort of panic-buying
because everybody understands
that personal hygiene is their responsibility.
And the ease of that communication
as well as transparency between
the government's policies and the public's attitude
towards following best practices,
has really led to reducing
the number of cases in South Korea.
- Five weeks after the first American
was tested for coronavirus in the U.S.,
President Trump said this:
The risk to the American people remains very low.
- He continued to downplay
the escalating national crisis.
There was a disconnect between what Trump
and health officials were saying about the virus,
even as U.S. had the most COVID-19 cases
in the world by the end of March.
South Korea took everything seriously much earlier on.
The country had learned hard lessons
from the trauma of its MERS outbreak in 2015.
- And then there are the containment plans
for the two countries.
South Korea has a rigorous "Triple T" system
of trace, test and treat.
Let's break it down.
The first idea about tracing has to do
with using the latest technology
to trace the moving routes of confirmed patients.
Authorities tracked routes
taken by confirmed COVID-19 patients
through a variety of means.
They included satellite technology,
cell-phone records and credit-card histories.
This means the government could trace and quarantine
anyone who'd had contact with an infected person.
There are even GPS apps mapping out
where patients of COVID-19 have been,
so users can avoid those places.
More on the pitfalls of that later.
Such tracing helped effective mass testing,
with South Korea testing 20,000 people per day,
from drive-thru tests
to phone booth style testing in hospitals.
It means these Korean call-center employees
can easily get tested through
a mobile unit outside their office.
They work in a building where there have been
confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
Tests take 10 minutes.
Results are given over the phone five hours later.
Nearly 100 labs were available
to perform tests nationwide as of March.
Oh, and testing is free and paid for by the government.
You see, South Koreans have access to,
you guessed it, universal health care.
In the U.S., some form of insurance is required
to get access to health care.
Adding onto that problem was
a lack of test kits in the U.S.
The CDC didn't make enough test kits
available or accessible.
People were only able to get tested
when they had severe symptoms,
and the pledge to get 1.5 million people
tested in a week never came through.
The U.S. did finally catch up with South Korea
with over 300,000 tests completed by the end of March.
But with six times the population
and with fewer accessible tests that came out much later,
the U.S. was still way behind.
Even in treatment, the two countries
had two very different outcomes.
South Korean government invested
very heavily into lab technologies
and specialized treatment centers.
So, at this point, all confirmed patients are isolated.
- By late March,
over 4,100 people in South Korea
had recovered from the disease.
And around the same time,
South Korea's COVID-19 cases were at
their lowest point since the outbreak.
Over in the U.S., hospitals became overwhelmed.
New York was on a steeper infection trajectory
than Wuhan in China.
The city had a few thousand ventilators.
It needed tens of thousands more.
Rigorous prevention systems in South Korea included
social distancing, school shutdowns,
organized mask distribution,
and screening passengers leaving the country.
They also included daily disinfection
of public areas like the metro or this popular market.
Even BTS did their part, canceling concerts
and sending encouraging messages
to fans and medical staff.
That kind of collective approach and culture
in South Korea was very important
in curbing the crisis at an early stage.
- Such preventative intervention
meant South Korea was able to get away
with not being in a lockdown.
Of course, not everything implemented in South Korea
would have potentially worked in the U.S.
The sort of surveillance required for this level of tracing
can be viewed as intrusive
and as a threat to civil liberties.
I could only imagine that the public response
in the United States or Canada
would be very negative towards such measures.
And I don't think, frankly,
it would work in the North American context.
But in the South Korean case,
the public collectively recognized the value added
in sharing such information for the greater good.
- It's also worth mentioning that
South Korea isn't the only place
where COVID-19 seems to have been contained.
There was even stronger early success
in tackling coronavirus in Singapore.
Even though things are rapidly changing,
they didn't let it get away from them from the start.
On a grander scheme of things,
there's still a lot more to go.
But the efficiency and the availability
as well as access to testing centers
is really what sets the Korean case apart
from what's happening in the United States.