E ffective contact tracing is critical to controlling the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) (1). South Korea adopted a rigorous contact-tracing program comprising traditional shoe-leather epidemiology and new methods to track contacts by linking large databases (global positioning system, credit card transactions, and closed-circuit television). We describe a nationwide COVID-19 contact tracing program in South Korea to guide evidence-based policy to mitigate the pandemic (2). The Study South Korea's public health system comprises a national-level governance (Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), 17 regional governments, and 254 local public health centers. The first case of COVID-19 was identified on January 20, 2020; by May 13, a total of 10,962 cases had been reported.
We describe the epidemiology of a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in a call center in South Korea. We obtained information on demographic characteristics by using standardized epidemiologic investigation forms. We performed descriptive analyses and reported the results as frequencies and proportions for categoric variables. Of 1,143 persons who were tested for COVID-19, a total of 97 (8.5%, 95% CI 7.0%–10.3%) had confirmed cases. Of these, 94 were working in an 11th-floor call center with 216 employees, translating to an attack rate of 43.5% (95% CI 36.9%–50.4%). The household secondary attack rate among symptomatic case-patients was 16.2% (95% CI 11.6%– 22.0%). Of the 97 persons with confirmed COVID-19, only 4 (1.9%) remained asymptomatic within 14 days of quarantine, and none of their household contacts acquired secondary infections. Extensive contact tracing, testing all contacts, and early quarantine blocked further transmission and might be effective for containing rapid outbreaks in crowded work settings.
We report the first 7,755 patients with confirmed COVID-19 in Korea as of March 12 th , 2020. A total of 66 deaths have been recorded, giving a case fatality proportion of 0.9%. Older people, and those with comorbidities were at a higher risk of a fatal outcome. The highest number of cases of COVID-19 were in Daegu, followed by Gyeongbuk. This summary may help to understand the disease dynamics in the early phase of the COVID-19 outbreaks, and may therefore, guide future public health measures.
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