By Sudipta Subham Sahu
Vision, timely action, application of technology and past experience played a vital role in combating with the pandemic.
Open supermarket and restaurants are a rare sight in many parts of the world, today due to the outbreak of Coronavirus. Yet in South Korea, one can easily spot people savouring their meal in restaurant and shopping in supermarkets. When the positive cases of Covid-19 are growing exponentially even in countries with strict lockdown, South Korea has managed to control the spread of fatal virus, without forcing its people to lockdown. How did it succeed in doing so?
In early February, when the virus was starting to gain international attention due to sudden upsurge of positive cases and deaths in Wuhan, China, the South Korean authorities had already produced and authorised thousands of test kits to check Covid-19 infected individuals. When the number of cases started to increase, the state had the ability to test thousands of people at once. Further, thermal imaging cameras were used in all public places like bars and supermarkets, which could measure the human body temperature.
Ben Vo, the owner of City Farmer Market says, “The thermal camera is placed on the entrance, and is focused on the face of a person. If an associate sees a reading of 100.4°F or higher, then the customer is led away and asked to leave.” Same happen in all other public places. The state didn’t impose a lockdown, but every person entering a public place has his body temperature measured, and only the normal ones are allowed inside.
Furthermore, the South Korean officials have adopted the policy of aggressive tracing. By means of credit card transactions, CCTV footage and location data from cell phones, the South Korean officials trace down people who might have crossed the path of infected ones. Overall around 4,00,000 people have been tested after being traced.
South Korea’s disastrous experience with MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) Virus in 2015 turned a boon for the nation. Fearing that the Covid-19 might bring the same bad fate that MERS brought in 2015, the authorities didn’t treat the virus in cavalier manner. It responded immediately to the outbreak. People were advised to stay in home.
Another major step was the advice of use of dominant hand. Usually, a person touches his face with his dominant hand. So the authorities advised the citizens to do their works with the non dominant hand as far as possible, so that the dominant hand remains safe and clean. Learning from its mistakes in 2015, the South Korean Government altered laws to improve information sharing between different branches of government and the health department to effectively fight the fatal virus.
All these measures helped South Korea to face Covid-19 to a great extent and the upsurge of number of positive cases have gone down from about 750 to about 75 persons per day. Without a lockdown on its economy, it has managed to control the virus where countries like Spain and Italy have faced disaster.
