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| Travel agency counters at Terminal 1 in the Incheon International Airport, remained largely empty, Tuesday, amid fears of coronavirus infection. /Yonhap |
By Bahk Eun-ji
The government is urging citizens to limit travel to Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan and also eastern neighbor Japan which have all reported community transmission of the coronavirus, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) Tuesday.
"The measure is a part of the government's efforts to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus in Korea from visitors to other countries, in addition to China" said Kim Gang-lip, vice minister of the Ministry of Health and deputy head of the central disaster headquarters during a regular media briefing.
The decision is based on a report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Sunday, which named the six countries as places where the coronavirus is thought to be spreading through communities. It is a separate advisory from the regular travel warning announced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The foreign ministry has maintained the second-highest level of "withdrawal recommendation" for Hubei Province in China.
Along with the foreign ministry's alert level of "restraint," the third highest level in the four-tier travel warning system, to Hong Kong and Macao, the KCDC also said it will apply strict quarantine screening to entrants from the two regions.
Currently, entrants from China are asked to fill out health questionnaires to check whether they show symptoms of the virus infection, such as fever and respiratory problems. They are also required to provide their mobile phone numbers and addresses of the places they will stay in Korea, which are then checked for their veracity.
The strict measures took effect from Wednesday, following the country's 26th and 27th confirmed patients who stayed in Guangdong Province in China then Macao for three months before returning to Korea on Jan.31.
"Given the large number of confirmed cases of the virus in the two regions ― 36 confirmed cases and one death in Hong Kong, and 10 confirmed cases in Macao ― the government can't ignore the possibility of an inflow of the infected patients to Korea from those regions," said Jung Eun-kyeong, the head of the KCDC.
The public health authorities will also start providing travel information on countries with confirmed cases to local medical institutions and pharmacies later in the day in an effort to create stronger safeguards in communities.
Meanwhile, the government also confirmed one more case of the new coronavirus, bringing the total number of such cases to 28. The KCDC said the 28th patient is a 30-year-old Chinese woman who appears to have been infected by the nation's third confirmed patient.
The Chinese woman had been in self-quarantine before testing positive to the virus, and she didn't show any symptoms of the virus infection.
The number of people tested for the virus were 3,629 as of Tuesday, up from 3,110 the previous day. Among them, 2,736 tested negative and another 865 are currently under quarantine awaiting testing.
