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| Travelers arriving from China line up in a separate queue before entering Korea at Incheon International Airport, Friday. Yonhap |
By Lee Hae-rin
One out of eight travelers from China who had tested negative for the coronavirus before boarding their flight to Korea tested positive on arrival at Incheon International Airport, Thursday, the first day the country mandated pre-entry negative COVID-19 test results from such travelers.
According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), 1,247 travelers from China arrived at Incheon on the day, and of the 278 short-term travelers of foreign nationality among them undergoing PCR tests at the airport's testing centers, 12.6 percent, or 35 of them tested positive.
The figure was lower than 31.4 percent the previous day when the pre-entry test requirement was not in place.
The health authorities explained that the time gap of 48 to 50 hours between pre-departure and post-arrival tests for these travelers could have been an incubation period for the virus and yielded new infection cases.
"The virus could have been under an incubation period during the pre-departure testing and turned positive after arrival," said Hong Jeong-ik, a senior official at the KDCA, explaining that the higher the number of COVID-19 patients and incubatory carriers in China, the higher the likelihood of seeing positive test results after arrival here.
All travelers turned in negative results and no forged tests were found, the KDCA added.
To minimize China's potential effect on spreading the virus, the Korean government mandated a post-arrival PCR test on all travelers from China of non-Korean nationality who are staying in Korea for less than 90 days, Monday.
In response to detecting new cases among the arrivals, Korea further required them, since Thursday, to present negative results of either a PCR test taken within 48 hours before departure or a rapid antigen test (RAT) conducted by a medical professional within 24 hours before boarding.
Since enforcing travel restrictions, a total of 5,360 China-bound travelers have arrived at Incheon, and 277 out of 1,199 travelers subject to the condition have tested positive upon arrival, yielding 23.1 percent of the accumulative positive rate.
The numbers of confirmed cases among Korean nationals and long-term travelers of foreign nationality have not been tallied yet.
Meanwhile, the government plans to deploy additional personnel from the military and police at quarantine facilities and the airport to control arrivals from China and prevent another escape by a traveler under quarantine.
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