South Korea's model of containment of coronavirus: What the world can learn

South Korea's model of containment of the novel coronavirus is being hailed as one of the best in the United States. It's said how South Korea dealt with the outbreak can serve as a blueprint for local and national policymakers wrestling with how best to proceed.

The new study from South Korea -- titled "Coronavirus Disease Outbreak in Call Center, South Korea" -- describes how South Korea dealt with an outbreak in a high-rise building in the busiest part of Seoul with an early intervention.

The intervention included closing the entire building, extensive testing and quarantine of infected people and their contacts.

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The virus knows no walls: once a business is infected, the entire community may quickly become infected, unless dramatic action -- such as occurred in Seoul -- is taken.

The said study was conducted by experts from the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Seoul Metropolitan Government and other local institutions.

The outbreak was first recognised on March 8, 2020, approximately two weeks after South Korea found itself amid the outbreak. The outbreak arose from exposures at the Shincheonji Church in the city of Daegu, about 150 miles south of Seoul.

About half of South Korea's current toll of 10,738 confirmed cases are related to the Shincheonji Church outbreak.

Guided by previous outbreaks of SARS and MERS, South Korean health officials had a mature process for containment in the building already in place. A response team immediately undertook review of the site of the infections -- a 19-storey mixed commercial-residential building.

On March 9, one day after the first cases were reported, the entire building was closed. Testing was performed almost immediately on 1,143 people (workers, residents and a few visitors) with rapid results available to those affected and the team working to control the situation.

The testing showed that 97 people (8.5 per cent of those occupying the building) were infected. Most of the cases were women in their 30s and almost all (94 of the 97) worked on the 11th floor of the building, in a call centre.

Investigators then constructed a detailed map of who was and was not infected, demonstrating that the overwhelming majority of cases had worked on one side of the 11th floor in extremely close proximity.

Forty-three per cent of all workers on the 11th floor developed infection with an even higher proportion among those in the heavily affected wing.

The next step -- the families and housemates of the 97 people with infection were tested. Of these, about 16 per cent were positive for Covid-19.

No cases were diagnosed in the 15 home contacts of cases with "pre-symptoms" (nothing at time of test but development soon thereafter) or no symptoms at any time.

Upon summarising their investigation, the officials said the cases were in a "high-density work environment" and that spread was largely limited to one section of one floor.

The distance between chairs and the duration of exposure were critical determinants of transmission at a single point in time -- but "allowing undiagnosed persons to unwittingly go about their business increases the opportunity for more and more uninfected people to have close and sustained contact with them, possibly leading to a secondary case," they said.

Had the investigators waited a week, the infection would likely have spread widely to family, then to friends, then to friends' workplaces -- just as we are seeing in the outbreaks in US meat processing plants with a comparably high-density work environment.

This report from South Korea is being hailed as a perfect blueprint to follow in order to contain the pandemic in the US, and the world.

The US has so far reported over 61,000 deaths from coronavirus, while the global tally has topped 2,30,000.