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On Wednesday, November 25, 583 new cases of coronavirus infection were registered in South Korea and the Minister of Health, Park Neung-hoo, said that the country has entered the third wave of the epidemic, after those of March and August . There were more than 500 new cases for the first time since March, when the infection had spread to South Korea, the first country after China.
While at the end of February Wuhan, the Chinese city from which the coronavirus pandemic began, had been in a very strict quarantine for a month, South Korea had managed to halt the growth of infections and effectively contain the spread of the virus. . South Korea’s approach was explicitly praised by the World Health Organization: In proportion to confirmed infections, deaths from coronavirus-related causes were few, but this was due both to an extensive policy on tampons and the sophisticated system. . infection tracking.
If the waves of March and August had started from outbreaks originating in religious groups, for some royal sects – in March the faithful of the Protestant Sarang Jeil Church in Seongbuk, a district north of the capital Seoul, in August those of the congregation of Shincheonji Jesus, a Christian cult with at least 200,000 followers: The third wave involves more diverse communities of people in offices, schools, gymnasiums and other small groups scattered around the capital, Seoul. This spread in less controllable and identifiable groups of people makes it more difficult to track infections and therefore contain them.
For this reason, since Monday the government imposed strict rules of physical distancing in Seoul and surrounding regions after the daily increase in cases began to fluctuate around 300. Strict rules of distancing in the army, and a ban were also decided. ten days for the soldiers to leave, after 50 new cases were found in a barracks for training recruits.
This third wave has already exceeded the maximum increase in daily cases, 441, of the second, registered on August 27. According to Professor Kim Woo-joo of Korea University Guro Hospital, this third wave was inevitable after the relaxation of physical distancing measures that led people to return to bars, restaurants and travel freely for more than a month. , before the authorities restored the restrictions.
Kim also said that “unlike the first wave of February and March and the second wave of August and September, when infections were confined to limited areas, they now occur in many different places at the same time, making the work of contact tracing “.
Health Minister Park said he was also concerned that the percentage of infected between the ages of 20 and 30 has risen, to 28 percent of all cases in the last month. The spread of the infection among young people, many of them asymptomatic, has prompted the government to ask students not to attend schools to prepare for the college entrance exams scheduled for December 3.
Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said contagions are spreading “in our daily lives, including family gatherings and informal gatherings, and this makes it difficult for the government to take preventive measures.” It is, therefore, a very different situation from that of the first two waves in which the government had managed to contain the contagion at a still early stage, and had achieved it without massive quarantine measures, but thanks to an extensive policy of swabs and sophisticated contagion tracking.
On April 10 and 11, when the strictest distancing measures were in effect in Italy and other European countries, there was even a vote in South Korea. 44 million had voted to renew the 300 members of the National Assembly, the country’s unicameral parliament.
South Korea is not the only country facing a third wave of infections. Among others, especially from Asian countries, where the third wave is developing is Japan where, after the peak of 2,514 cases on November 22, the highest since the beginning of the epidemic in the country, the government The capital region Tokyo has imposed an early closure at 10 pm for bars and restaurants that will be in effect for three weeks from Saturday 28.
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