Key info


Date:
29 May 2020

Authors:
Amy Dighe, Lorenzo Cattarino, Gina Cuomo-Dannenburg, Janetta Skarp, Natsuko Imai, Sangeeta Bhatia, Katy A. M. Gaythorpe, Kylie E. C. Ainslie, Marc Baguelin, Samir Bhatt, Adhiratha Boonyasiri, Olivia Boyd, Nicholas F. Brazeau, Giovanni Charles, Laura V. Cooper, Helen Coupland, Zulma Cucunuba, Bimandra A. Djaafara, Ilaria Dorigatti, Oliver D. Eales, Jeff Eaton, Sabine L. van Elsand, Fabricia Ferreira Do Nascimento, Richard G. FitzJohn, Seth Flaxman, Keith Fraser, Lily Geidelberg, William D. Green, Timothy Hallet, Arran Hamlet, Katharina Hauck, David Haw, Wes Hinsley, Ben Jeffery, Edward Knock, Daniel J Laydon, John A. Lees, Thomas Mellan, Swapnil Mishra, Gemma Nedjati-Gilani, Pierre Nouvellet, Lucy C. Okell, Kris V. Parag, Margarita Pons-Salort, Manon Ragonnet-Cronin, Hayley A. Thompson, H. Juliette T. Unwin, Robert Verity, Michaela A. C. Vollmer, Erik Volz, Patrick G. T. Walker, Caroline E. Walters, Oliver J. Watson, Charles Whittaker, Lilith K. Whittles, Xiaoyue Xi, Azra C. Ghani, Christl A. Donnelly, Neil M. Ferguson, Steven Riley1

Correspondence:
s.riley@imperial.ac.uk and neil.ferguson@imperial.ac.uk

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WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling, MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics, NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare Associated Infections and Antimicrobial Resistance, Imperial College London, School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Brown University, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford

Now published in BMC Medicine; 09-10-2020, doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-020-01791-8 

Summary

While South Korea experienced a sharp growth in COVID-19 cases early in the global pandemic, it has since rapidly reduced rates of infection and now maintains low numbers of daily new cases. Despite using less stringent “lockdown” measures than other affected countries, strong social distancing measures have been advised in high incidence areas and a 38% national decrease in movement occurred voluntarily between February 24th - March 1st. Suspected and confirmed cases were isolated quickly even during the rapid expansion of the epidemic and identification of the Shincheonji cluster. South Korea swiftly scaled up testing capacity and was able to maintain case-based interventions throughout. However, individual case-based contact tracing, not associated with a specific cluster, was a relatively minor aspect of their control program, with cluster investigations accounting for a far higher proportion of cases: the underlying epidemic was driven by a series of linked clusters, with 48% of all cases in the Shincheonji cluster and 20% in other clusters. Case-based contacts currently account for only 11% of total cases. The high volume of testing and low number of deaths suggests that South Korea experienced a small epidemic of infections relative to other countries. Therefore, caution is needed in attempting to duplicate the South Korean response in settings with larger more generalized epidemics. Finding, testing and isolating cases that are linked to clusters may be more difficult in such settings.

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