Response to COVID-19 in South Korea and implications for lifting stringent interventions.

ABSTRACT:

Background

After experiencing a sharp growth in COVID-19 cases early in the pandemic, South Korea rapidly controlled transmission while implementing less stringent national social distancing measures than countries in Europe and the USA. This has led to substantial interest in their "test, trace, isolate" strategy. However, it is important to understand the epidemiological peculiarities of South Korea's outbreak and characterise their response before attempting to emulate these measures elsewhere.

Methods

We systematically extracted numbers of suspected cases tested, PCR-confirmed cases, deaths, isolated confirmed cases, and numbers of confirmed cases with an identified epidemiological link from publicly available data. We estimated the time-varying reproduction number, R

SUBMITTER: Dighe A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7544529 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature