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Coronavirus: South Korea scrambles to trace thousands of people possibly infected at Seoul nightclubs

Asian country reports highest number of new cases in more than a month

Tom Embury-Dennis

Monday 11 May 2020 11:09 BST

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Simon Calder explains why the travel industry will recover after coronavirus

South Korea is searching for thousands of people who may have been infected by coronavirus in a cluster of cases linked to a single neighbourhood in Seoul.

Officials, who are scrambling to contain a new outbreak, reported 35 new infections across the country as of midnight on Sunday, the highest numbers in more than a month.

All but six of those cases were linked to an outbreak at nightclubs and bars, many of them catering for the LGBT+ community, in the capital's Itaewon neighbourhood.

That has raised complications for officials desperately trying to track those who might be infected in a nation where open homosexuality is often taboo and LGBT+ people still face discrimination, including job loss and hate speech.

Authorities have tested more than 2,450 people who had patronised the night spots in Itaewon, but were still trying to track down around 3,000 more. Hundreds of other people who came in contact with clubbers have also been tested.

“Our top priority is to minimise the spread of the infections in the greater Seoul area,” prime minister Chung Sye-kyun told a meeting with government officials on Monday, calling on local governments to work with police to track down patrons.

“We should quickly find and test them, and speed is key.”

The Asian country has been lauded for its quick action on the pandemic, significantly reducing the rate of new infections in recent weeks, but the resurgence in case numbers has raised concerns the country could be entering a second wave outbreak.

The outbreak has also highlighted the potential unintended side effects of South Korea's invasive tracing methods and wide public disclosure of some patient information as part of its approach to tackling the coronavirus.

Health ministry official Yoon Tae-ho acknowledged concerns that individuals within the LGBT+ community could be outed against their will or face discrimination if they came forward.

“We release the movement of confirmed patients to encourage anyone who might be exposed get tested voluntarily,” he told a briefing. “We urge you to refrain from distributing patients' personal information or groundless rumours, which not only hurts them but can also be subject to punishment.”

The Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said 86 people have tested positive in connection with the Itaewon outbreak, which was made public on Friday, including people who had travelled to the capital and subsequently returned home.

Seoul mayor Park Won-soon pleaded with clubbers to be tested, promising that personal information would be protected and warning that people caught evading testing could be fined.

“If Seoul was penetrated, the nation is at risk,” Mr Park said, noting the city currently has around 700 of the nation's 10,909 cases, which include 256 deaths.

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Show all 13

1/13Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Cheryll Mack, 46, a registered nurse in the emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The Covid-19 spread has affected a lot of livelihood, a lot of people's lives. It has created a crisis, death in general. So I would like to ask not one single person, but all people worldwide, to converge and join the platform that this is something that nobody can fight individually," said Mack.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Dr Laura Bontempo, 50, an emergency medicine doctor wears her personal protective equipment she uses when she sees patients, while posing for a photograph after a nine-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moments have actually been separating families from patients, there is a no-visitor policy now and taking people away from their loved ones is very challenging," Bontempo said. "I'm used to treating sick patients. I treat sick patients all the time. It's very different knowing that the patient you are treating, is actually a risk to you as well. That's the main difference here. No one who works in hospitals is afraid of treating sick people. Just want to keep staff safe and the patients safe at the same time."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Ernest Capadngan, 29, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment during the shift was just seeing Covid patients die helpless and without their family members beside them," Capadngan said.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Martine Bell, 41, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a six-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The hardest thing in all of this, has been taking care of fellow healthcare providers. It really hits home and it's really scary when you see someone that could be you coming in and now you're taking care of them. It's also hitting home that once healthcare providers start getting sick, who is going to be taking care of the public," Bell said. "It's very stressful, everyone is on edge. We don't know who's coming in next, or how sick they're going to be, or if we are going to get a whole bunch of people or if we're not going to get no one. It's a really stressful and just a completely unusual time for all of us."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Kaitlyn Martiniano, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital. "We have a lot of patients and they are pretty sick right now but we have not yet been hit as hard as New York or Seattle, so I feel like we are very lucky with that so far. Every day you have to just be optimistic." Said Martiniano. "I think the reason that we are not being hit as hard right now is because so many things are closed, and because so many people are staying at home."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Tracey Wilson, 53, a nurse practitioner in an intensive care unit (ICU), poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I had a patient fall out of bed today and I had to call his wife and tell her and she couldn't come see him, even though she pleaded and begged to come see him," Wilson said. "There is a lot of unknowns and with that unknown is a lot of anxiety and stress that we're not used to dealing with."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Meghan Sheehan, 27, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I think the hardest moment has been the fear that lives within all of us. There is a lot of unknown right now. We fear what's going to happen tomorrow, how the emergency department will look next week when we come in. We have fears about our own colleagues, whether they will fall ill. We also fear that we could be asymptomatic carriers and bring this virus home to our families and our loved ones. There has been a lot of fear over our supplies and whether we'll run out. And then obviously there is the fear that we will see patients and not be able to do everything we normally can to help save patients' lives," Sheehan said.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Kimberly Bowers, 44, a nurse practitioner in an ICU, poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was a young woman who died and her family wasn't able to be here with her," Bowers said. "I think right now, it's just frustrating and scary just not knowing what comes next."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Tiffany Fare, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "One of the hardest moments was having to see a family member of a Covid patient, say goodbye over an iPad, rooms away. That was a tough one, I can't imagine how hard it would be to be saying goodbye, you can't see your loved one and then they're gone," Fare said. "My team has been really great to me. We've worked really well together and we've really come together in this crisis. We don't really know each other, we all come from different units within the same hospital, so for us to come together and work so well as a team, it's been a journey but I think that's what is giving me hope."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Dr Kyle Fischer, 35, an emergency medicine doctor, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where he works. "Since it's a new virus, we don't have any experience with it. For most diseases I am used to seeing it and taking care of it and this, I don't have any starting place. I know what I'm hearing from New York, I've read all of the papers it seems like, but no one knows what the correct answers are, so there's a huge amount of uncertainty and people are really, really sick. So it's hard to second guess whether or not you are doing the right thing when you think you are but you never quite know," said Fischer.

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Julia Trainor, 23, a registered nurse at a surgical ICU, poses for a photograph after a 14-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was having to put a breathing tube in my patient who could no longer breathe for herself and after the breathing tube went in, we called her family and the husband, of course, couldn't visit her because of visitor restrictions at the hospital. So I had to put him on the phone and hold the phone to her ear, as he told her that he loved her so much and then I had to wipe away her tears as she was crying," said Trainor. "I'm used to seeing very sick patients and I'm used to patients dying but nothing quite like this. In the flip of a switch, without the support, they're completely isolated. They're very sick. Some of them recover and some of them don't. But the hardest part, I would think, is them having to go through this feeling like they are alone."

Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Lisa Mehring, 45, a registered nurse who works in a biocontainment unit with Covid-19 patients, poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works in Maryland. "Seeing these new moms have babies has been the hardest moment along with having do their pumping for the new moms and them not being able to be with their newborn children, it's hard to think of the family that they are missing," Mehring said.

Photos Reuters

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus

Jacqueline Hamil, 30, a registered nurse in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital. "The hardest moment of my shift today, I was in charge, and we had a really sick patient that was in a really, really small room and usually, when we have sick crashing patients, we can have a ton of resources and a ton of staff go in and help with the nurse and the doctors that are taking care of that patient. But due to the patient being ruled out for the coronavirus, we could only have five or six people in the room at a time and putting on all the gowns and gloves and masks and face shields to protect us in case the patient does have coronavirus, it takes a while, so the nurse that was in there, ended up being in the room for you know 6, 7 hours with minimal breaks and it was hard being in charge and knowing that she was stuck in the room and really nothing I could do to help her," Hamil said.

Reuters

The spike in cases comes just as the South Korean government was easing some social distancing restrictions and reopening schools and businesses. Official data released on Monday showed exports and imports suffered a precipitous decline in the first 10 days of May, underlining a bleak outlook for Asia's fourth largest economy.

Seoul's education superintendent Cho Hee-yeon issued a statement proposing delaying the reopening of schools, which was scheduled to begin on Wednesday, by one week in light of the new outbreak.

Technology firms Kakao Corp and Naver Corp suspended plans for employees to return to the office starting Monday, after two cases linked to the club outbreaks were reported at IT firm TmaxSoft, company spokespersons said.

TmaxSoft said on Friday it had shut down its office near Seoul and would test all employees for Covid-19.

The 69 cases reported by the KCDC over the past 48 hours were equivalent to the number of cases it recorded over the entire previous week.

Still, KCDC director Jeong Eun-kyeong said while the outbreak was worrisome, it was not appropriate to call it a second wave just yet.

“The epidemic is ongoing,” she said.

Additional reporting by Reuters

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