Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Gov't to focus on 'speedy' virus testing to find asymptomatic patients
Medical workers prepare to conduct COVID-19 tests at a testing station in a local healthcare center in Songpa District, Seoul, Thursday. Yonhap
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
The health authorities will engage in more preemptive efforts to search for asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers by adopting speedier testing methods and expanding the number of people being tested.
By doing so, the government is trying to break transmission chains that are cropping up during people's daily lives and among local communities without any specific cases of mass infection.
According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), Thursday, there were 682 coronavirus infections for Wednesday, including 646 local cases, raising the total caseload to 40,098. Among the locally transmitted cases, 251 were reported in Seoul, 201 in Gyeonggi Province and 37 in Incheon, west of Seoul. Eight additional deaths were reported, raising the toll to 564.
The recent increase resulted from the seasonal factor that the coronavirus becomes more active in the winter, as well as its fast spread which is outpacing the speed of contact tracing and testing by the KDCA. The ratio of patients whose infection routes are unknown has reached 20.7 percent, meaning that one in five patients do not know where or how they were infected.
In this situation, the government has allowed free tests at local healthcare centers since Tuesday, regardless of the possibility of contact with a confirmed patient or whether the person being tested has symptoms. Previously, free tests were only possible with a doctor's recommendation when the person had symptoms such as fever, coughing, difficulty in breathing, chills, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat, or had been in contact with a confirmed patient.
The operation hours of public healthcare centers in the Seoul metropolitan area have been extended until 9 p.m. during weekdays and 6 p.m. on weekends and holidays. For facilities vulnerable to becoming infection hotspots, such as nursing homes and elderly-care hospitals, rapid antigen and saliva tests have been introduced.
The health authorities will also set up temporary testing centers by Monday at more than 150 sites where many young people gather, including university districts and Seoul Station, as infections among the young have been growing with many not showing symptoms.
Anyone can be tested anonymously and for free by simply providing a cell phone number at the center, regardless of symptoms or possible contact with confirmed patients.
In the temporary testing centers, people can choose between the polymerize chain reaction (PCR) test, or the antigen and saliva tests, which are cheaper and faster although the accuracy rate is 92 percent of the PCR test.
The KDCA said the preemptive and aggressive efforts to expand testing are expected to help find asymptomatic infections. Up to 110,000 tests per day will be available, the agency said.
“We allowed people to be tested anonymously at the time of mass infections surrounding clubs in Itaewon in May and in August,” a health official said in a briefing. “Anyone, showing symptoms or not, can be tested if they come to the testing venues.”