Foreigner entry ban possible if more deadly variants emerge: new KDCA chief

Peck Kyong-ran, the commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) speaks during a press conference at the agency's office in Osong, North Chungcheong Province, Thursday. Courtesy of KDCA

By Lee Hyo-jin

Imposing an entry ban on travelers of foreign nationality could be reviewed in the event of the emergence of more fatal COVID-19 variants or new infectious diseases, according to the newly-appointed commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), Peck Kyong-ran, Thursday.

"The transmission characteristics of a new variant, if it emerges, will be highly uncertain. And if a new strain is found to be more fatal than the Delta variant, an entry ban on foreign arrivals could be fundamentally necessary," she said during a press briefing held at the KDCA office in Osong, North Chungcheong Province, the first such event since Peck took office in May.

In the early stages of the pandemic, Peck, who was then serving as the director of the Korea Society of Infectious Diseases and a professor at Samsung Medical Center, had called on the government immediately to ban the entry of foreign nationals, citing a lack of medical resources to treat them.

"The doctors are exhausted from treating our people (Koreans). We don't have resources left to treat foreign patients," she wrote on Facebook in March 2020, fueling the notion that some foreign nationals had entered Korea with the distinct purpose of receiving COVID-19 treatment.

She added, "A foreigner was hospitalized and the patient requested an interpreter service. So the nurses had to buy a translator device."

In response to The Korea Times' query about whether her thoughts remain unchanged, she said, "The situation was very different back then. There were so many uncertainties about the disease. We did not know exactly how the virus is transmitted, nor did we have a medical system to respond to a surge in patients."

She explained that imposing an entry ban on foreign nationals could have bought time for the government to be better prepared for the pandemic.

Peck went on to say that although the virus situation is relatively stable for now, the government could consider banning the entry of foreign arrivals if a more fatal variant than Delta emerges in the future.

Meanwhile, Peck said that her agency will introduce COVID-19 response measures based on scientific data, using the information accumulated over the last couple of years.

"We will establish a big data platform to gather data on infectious diseases, and come up with more tailored, sustainable pandemic response measures to reduce social conflicts," she said.

Paek also said that the KDCA will preemptively respond to the possible influx of other infectious diseases such as the Monkeypox virus or acute hepatitis in children that have been reported in other countries.

Responding to a question on to what extent the government plans to reveal the tracing data of the country's first patients of the diseases if reported, she said, "We will be extra cautious about the issue of excessively revealing the personal information of patients."

She added that although the previous administration's extensive contact tracing tactics played a big role in controlling the virus spread in the early stages of the pandemic, any excessive disclosure of information about patients' movements should be rectified.

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