By Sangmi Cha, Hyonhee Shin, Josh Smith
On the fourth floor of the Incheon city hall, South Korean epidemiological investigator Jang Hanaram’s office is stuffed with six desks, two folding cots, and a table strewn with instant noodles, energy drinks and digestive aids.
Jang is one of six staffers who work 24-hour shifts in the cramped space, frantically tracing and contacting potential coronavirus cases in South Korea’s third largest city as the country battles its largest wave of infections yet.
Jang said he knew this wave was different in early December when the bright red messages that report confirmed cases began to multiply in the chatroom on his computer screen.
“I thought, ‘Wow, this is really getting out of control,’” he said.
South Korea won international plaudits earlier this year when it quickly tamped down outbreaks by fielding an aggressive, high-tech contact tracing system that mined cellphone location data, credit card records, CCTV footage, and other information to track down and isolate potential patients.
But after a summer of touting South Korea’s approach as a model for the world, officials acknowledge the success of those earlier efforts helped fuel over-confidence that left them straining to contain a third wave and scrambling to defend a cautious vaccine timeline.
In interviews with Reuters, frontline fighters in South Korea’s war against the virus outlined what they say were critical mistakes by the government. Failings included not investing in enough manpower and training for the tracing programme, not mobilising private hospitals fast enough to free up more beds, indecisive social distancing policies, and adopting a slow approach to securing and rolling out vaccines.
To wield its digital tools, South Korea relies on an army of public health workers and conscript doctors like Jang, a recent medical school graduate who is working as a contact tracer in place of his mandatory military service.
Jang says the overworked and underpaid conscripts or other public health doctors rotate too quickly in and out of their positions, while many of the new recruits have little to no training.
“The sense of fatigue is very high now,” he said.
Compared to the disasters unfolding in the United States, Europe and other virus hot spots, South Korea’s 52,550 total cases and daily high of 1,097 are still low.
But this new wave is more persistent and widespread than any of the previous surges, and has led to an unprecedented spike in deaths, with some patients dying before hospital beds become available. The number of active cases is now more than double that of the previous high in March.
“Despite the warnings, over-confidence and excessive optimism had blossomed in many people’s minds,” said Lee Jae-myung, governor of Gyeonggi Province, the most populous area in the country. — Reuters
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
