Coronavirus outbreak among Vietnamese at student dormitory in South Korea as Covid-19 cases hit record
A group of 20 Vietnamese students at a dormitory in southern South Korea were found to be infected with Covid-19 on Wednesday, as the country's daily new coronavirus cases hit a new record.
Tests were carried out on 162 people - 59 of them students from Vietnam - after a Vietnamese student was found to be infected with the virus on Monday.
The students were living together at a dormitory in the Ajou Motor College in Boryeong City.
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In addition to the Vietnamese, the dormitory also houses hundreds of South Korean students, seven from Uzbekistan and one from Thailand.
"We are going to carry out tests on some 300 other students living in the dorm today," a spokesman for the city told the South China Morning Post.
The 20 new cases meant there had now been 55 infections recorded in Boryeong City, population of 100,000, he said.
A promotional leaflet for the Ajou Motor College in Boryeong City.
"Compared with the Seoul metropolitan area, the situation here is more stable," said the spokesman, adding that the South Chungcheong province that includes the city still had adequate hospital beds.
In the greater Seoul area, population nearly 26 million, officials said there were just three critical care beds left, with Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun describing the nation's top priority as being "securing more hospital beds".
Following the discovery of the student cluster in Boryeong, the city authorities tightened distancing measures to match those in Seoul.
"In order to prevent the virus from spreading further in this city, we are raising the distancing level, effective immediately", Mayor Kim Dong-il told journalists.
Both Boryeong and Seoul are now at level 2.5 of the country's five-tier system. Under this level, which the greater Seoul area entered on December 6, gatherings of more than 49 people are prohibited while karaoke rooms, indoor fitness facilities, nightclubs, bars and music halls are all closed. Operations are also curtailed for restaurants, cinemas, internet cafes, private academies, study halls, amusement parks, beauty salons, barber shops, large grocery stores and department stores.
Mayor Kim added that the municipal authorities were investigating the patients' travel histories, but suspected the infection had spread due to the close contact of students in the enclosed dormitory rooms.
Nationwide South Korea reported a further 1,078 Covid-19 cases on Wednesday, 24 of which were imported.
That raised the total number of cases to 45,442, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
Wednesday's daily caseload surpassed the previous record of 1,030, which was reached on Sunday, the first time the country had breached the 1,000 mark.
With health authorities warning the country's daily virus caseload may reach 1,200 within a few days, the government has been reticent to toughen distancing measures to the highest level possible over fears of the economic damage this would cause.
Under level 3 restrictions, which can be adopted when locally transmitted cases surge to between 800 and 1,000 or the daily tally doubles from the previous day, gatherings of 10 or more people will be banned, all schools will shut and all non-essential workers will be required to work from home.
The prime minister has said the government is doing all it can to avoid implementing the level 3 restrictions, which would effectively be the country's first lockdown.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
