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| Chinese students at Honam University in Gwangju, some 330 kilometers south of Seoul, enter a school dormitory, where they will be quarantined for 14 days, Tuesday. Yonhap |
By Bahk Eun-ji
Medical experts and university officials called on the government Wednesday to ban Chinese students from entering Korea amid mounting fears that they could bring the coronavirus with them.
The Korea Medical Association (KMA), the nation's largest doctors group, which has been calling for the controversial entry ban, stepped up its calls after the health authorities confirmed 22 more cases of COVID-19 Wednesday. It said the contagious virus has been spreading rapidly in local communities.
Universities are also struggling to find ways of managing their Chinese students as nearly 70,000 students are set to return to South Korea for the spring semester. Although health authorities and the Ministry of Education announced a series of initiatives to better manage and prevent the possible spread of the novel virus, the KMA said that restrictions on entry from China is the most urgent action from the government needed right now.
"We believe it will be the last chance to contain the virus as the most effective methods because stopping the inflow of carriers is necessary to contain the spread of COVID-19," KMA spokesperson Park Jong-hyuk said. "It is utterly unreasonable for the universities to take all the responsibilities of managing more than 70,000 Chinese students under the current situation."
Park said the country has faced a great risk of community transmission as many of the new confirmed cases are presumed to be domestic transmission despite the government's quarantine efforts.
According to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), the country's 31st patient is believed to have infected at least 11 others in Daegu, North Gyeongsang Province.
"In this situation, the health authorities should take stronger measures such as an entry ban from China as more citizens unwittingly have been in contact with those who have been infected but freely moved for days and weeks," he said.
The KMA also said quarantining the Chinese students for two weeks in a dormitory building will eventually infringe upon their freedom of movement.
"If the government implements the restrictions on entry from China, they can just stay at home there instead of being locked in a quarantine environment. The education ministry should think twice about which way is better for the Chinese students," he said.
Although the education ministry announced a plan to strengthen preventive measures to deal with the possible spread of the contagious virus on university campuses, school officials are still complaining of the difficulties in managing the Chinese students.
The ministry has suggested students take a leave of absence for the first semester this year, and pushed universities to prepare facilities to quarantine them after they enter Korea. A number of universities such as Chung-Ang, Hanyang and Kyung Hee universities have designated separate dormitories to quarantine Chinese students, but the problem is not all Chinese students have applied to stay at dormitories.
An official at one of the top universities in Seoul said the education ministry's guideline has done nothing but shift its responsibility to protect students onto university officials.
"For those students who are not staying in the dormitory, staff members of universities will check their health and whereabouts by phone during the two-week quarantine period, but we are wondering how effective it will be, because there are no ways to control them outside the campus," said the official who declined to be named.
He also said universities simply do not have the room to quarantine all of their Chinese students.
"If the education ministry wants the universities to manage the Chinese students on their campuses, it should take more active steps to use local government-owned facilities for quarantine, instead of avoiding their responsibility to protect not only Koreans but also other international students studying here," the official said.
