South Korean authorities yesterday pleaded with people to stay indoors and avoid large gatherings as new COVID-19 cases hovered close to 100 per day, including multiple people working on a US military base in the nation.
South Korea yesterday reported 91 new coronavirus cases, taking the national tally to 9,332, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The nation has reported similar daily numbers for the past two weeks, down from a high of more than 900 late last month.
Photo: AP
The government has sought to convince a restless public that several more weeks of social distancing and self-isolation might be needed to allow health authorities to tamp down the smaller, but still steady stream of new cases.
“As the weather is getting nicer, I know many of you may have plans to go outside, but social distancing cannot be successful when it’s only an individual, it needs to be the whole community,” South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare Public Health Policy Director-General Yoon Tae-ho told a news conference.
The US military command this week also moved to try to restrict the movements of about 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea.
US Forces Korea (USFK) yesterday reported that an American contractor had tested positive for COVID-19, the third case to be confirmed this week among Americans working at the sprawling Camp Humphreys, which hosts the headquarters of the US military command in the nation.
Late on Thursday, a US soldier stationed at the camp south of Seoul tested positive, as did another American contractor also working there earlier this week.
That makes 12 people — including two soldiers — related to USFK to test positive.
Officials are seeking to trace the patients’ previous movements, including the soldier, who was at Camp Humphreys as late as the day she tested positive.
USFK declared a public health emergency, which gives commanders more authority to ensure “total force compliance” with regulations aimed at stopping the spread of the disease by restricting the movements of not only troops, but also their families, as well as other civilians who work on its bases.
“We cannot allow the actions of a few, who knowingly and selfishly take matters into their own hands, [to] place the rest of population at an unacceptable level of risk,” USFK said in a letter this week. “Leaders have a responsibility to do everything in their power to protect all members of the team and make certain no one can infiltrate our protective ‘bubbles.’”
A Facebook page affiliated with Camp Humphreys on Wednesday was advertising entertainment events for Thursday and yesterday.
It is unclear if those gatherings were canceled, but new statements on the camp’s social media sites yesterday said that all movement on the base was restricted to “only bare necessities, which means food and life-health-safety.”
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