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| Public servants of Gyeonggi Provincial Government and its affiliates line up for coronavirus tests at a makeshift testing center set up at the provincial government building compound in Suwon, Wednesday. Yonhap |
By Bahk Eun-ji
As the third wave of COVID-19 pandemic drags on, more and more local governments, institutions and companies are urging residents and employees to get tested.
Although the move is aimed at preventing the spread of infection in advance, some point out that it is inefficient to conduct random tests for all residents or all workers regardless of whether they have been in contact with the virus. It is also a concern that mass testing will increase the workload for quarantine workers and waste administrative costs.
Seocho District Office in Seoul has been offering free tests for its 430,000 residents since Dec. 29. As of Friday, about 50,000 residents have been tested, and another 50,000 people who come to Seocho regularly for work also received tests.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government and quarantine authorities showed a negative response to the district office's mass testing decision, saying it only increases the total number of tests and thus delays test analysis.
"The most important thing is to ensure that test results are not delayed. It is important to find infected people through preemptive measures, but it should be centered on people who have been in contact with confirmed patients as well as those who are in high-risk facilities," a city official said.
Ahead of the Christmas holiday last month, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) also advised its 700 employees to get tested.
"We didn't have a confirmed case in the office, but the testing was encouraged as a preventive measure," an official of the SMOE said. No one tested positive at the time.
Gyeonggi Provincial Government and its affiliated institutions have been also conducting full-scale virus testing on all of their employees. The measure caused controversy as more than 12,000 people have been forced to queue for a long time at three test centers.
Experts warned that such mass testing could fatigue medical workers and lead to increased demand for more people to carry out the additional work.
"In a situation where limited medical resources have to be engaged in selected and focused work, such full-scale testing will increase the fatigue of medical staff and lead to delays in necessary testing," said Jung Ki-suk, a professor of pulmonary care at Hallym University's Sungsim Hospital.
"Unlike other tests for infectious diseases, the effectiveness of the coronavirus test does not last long. Even if you tested negative, you can't be relieved because you could still get infected later."
Experts also emphasized that an order of priority should be determined based on the risk of infection.
"The full-scale virus tests for residents have no medical grounds and go against quarantine authorities' guidelines," Lim Hyun-taek, chairman of the Korean Pediatric Society, said on social media. "We should focus on treating patients in critical condition rather than conducting meaningless tests."
Meanwhile, the country added 513 more COVID-19 cases including 484 local infections for Thursday, raising the total caseload to 71,241. It marked a slight drop from 524 identified a day earlier, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).
