Wednesday, January 29, 2020

and how's South Korea handling the whole coronavirus thing?

From the Joongang Daily: "Korea confirms its fourth case of coronavirus":

Three more people in Korea have been diagnosed with the new coronavirus over the Lunar New Year holidays, local health authorities announced Monday, bringing the country’s total number of confirmed cases to four.

All three were Korean men in their 50s who recently returned from Wuhan of Hubei Province, central China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. Korea’s Lunar New Year holidays lasted from Friday to Monday.

The first confirmed patient in Korea was a 35-year-old Chinese woman who traveled from her home in Wuhan to Incheon International Airport on Jan. 18 to spend the Chinese Spring Festival holidays with her friends in Korea and Japan. She was immediately transferred to a nearby hospital for quarantine after airport officials detected symptoms of the virus from her upon her arrival. She’s still in Korea, undergoing treatment.

The coronavirus, which broke out in Wuhan last month, has resulted in at least 2,744 infections and 80 deaths in China alone as of Monday, mostly in Wuhan. Outside China, the virus has spread to at least 10 countries, including the United States, France, Australia, Singapore, Nepal and Malaysia.

Read more at the link. For now, the protocol is: mask up when in crowds and/or confined spaces like subways; wash hands frequently; keep a wide berth from the rest of teeming humanity. In Korea, as we see, the confirmed cases all directly involve travel to Wuhan. This situation might change over the coming weeks and months, but for now, I see little cause for alarm. People on the street are visibly masking up, but that could be because of persistent air-quality issues, not because of the virus.



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