The Wall Street Journal - 22.02.2020 - 23.02.2020

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A6| Saturday/Sunday, February 22 - 23, 2020 *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.


After his Malaysian col-
league’s warning, he took a cor-
onavirus test: positive.
That triggered a virus hunt
in South Korea, where authori-
ties also notified their Singa-
porean counterparts. A South
Korean investigator traveled
to Guri, a Seoul suburb where
the man lives, collecting infor-
mation from other sources for
a time-stamped travel log,
health officials say.
Authorities listed his con-
tacts: 188 people to start with,
then 290 as the probe pro-
gressed, all of whom health of-
ficials needed to brief. The
KCDC says another South Ko-
rean conference attendee was
confirmed to have the illness.
Back in Singapore, Mr. Raj
and his team turned to the 15
participants living in Singapore.
Eleven said they were well, four
weren’t. Three of them tested
positive; all have recovered.
Health-care specialists inter-
viewed the trio about when
they got to the conference and
started feeling sick, and whom
they interacted with. Contact
tracers phoned dozens of peo-
ple the infected people had
named and gleaned more de-
tails about whom they might
have exposed.
Singapore had already
pressed into action seven
groups of 10 people each, who
work closely with Mr. Raj’s core
team for this work. The team
pored over the material to ar-
rive at critical decisions.
The health ministry quaran-
tined people with significant
exposure to the three pa-
tients—interaction, for in-
stance, that exceeded 30 min-
utes, Mr. Raj says. They
created a second category, of
people who had less-prolonged
contact with the three confer-

ence-goers, and placed them
under home surveillance.
Mr. Raj’s team prepared
questions for conference at-
tendees in other countries,
and their counterparts relayed
answers back.

Westward spread
Meanwhile, the virus trail
emerged in the West. U.K. citi-
zen Steve Walsh, a Servomex
employee at the conference,
was back in Europe by Jan. 24,
stopping with friends in a
French ski town, Les Con-
tamines-Montjoie, says Mayor
Etienne Jacquet.
The group stayed in a six-
bedroom unit owned by a Brit-
ish friend, Mayor Jacquet says.
Mr. Walsh left France Jan. 28,
the mayor says, while several of
his friends stayed behind.
Mr. Walsh, through the Ser-
vomex spokesman, declined to
comment. In a statement
through the spokesman, he
said that back in the U.K. he
learned he had been exposed
to a confirmed coronavirus
case. He had no symptoms, he
said, but contacted U.K. health
authorities anyway.
His test was positive, the
third case confirmed in the
U.K., health authorities there
say. Authorities raced to find
everyone he might have ex-
posed—from the staff of a
Brighton pub to airline pas-
sengers he sat near.
British authorities called
French counterparts, who in
the middle of the night phoned
Mayor Jacquet of Les Con-
tamines-Montjoie. Mr. Walsh’s
friends had spent the week un-
aware they might have been
infected, Mr. Jacquet says.
On Feb. 7, French health offi-
cials pinpointed the location of

tentially infected and relied on
self-reporting by sickened con-
ference-goers, creating “activ-
ity maps” that detailed their
movement.
They checked flight mani-
fests and called passengers.
French authorities closed down
schools in sparsely populated
towns. U.K. public-health offi-
cials isolated health-care work-
ers who got the illness and
searched for patients with
whom they came in contact.
Tracking even a relatively
small number of cases such as
those linked to the conference
requires meticulous detective
work. To stop the contagion’s
global spread, it is critical to
identify people who might
have caught the virus before
they pass it on.
“There’s a lot of classic,
boots-on-the-ground epidemiol-
ogy going on right now tracing
these cases,” says Dr. Matthew
Ferrari, associate professor of
biology at the Center for Infec-
tious Disease Dynamics at
Pennsylvania State University.


‘Activity map’


Singapore, whose health au-
thorities have confirmed 86
cases there, has deployed doz-
ens of contact tracers and data
analysts to hunt down every bit
of information. The work be-
gins in hospitals where special-
ists are interviewing sickened
people to map their where-
abouts for the days before they
were isolated and might have
infected others, seeking details
such as whom they ate with
and met, which shoe shop they
visited, how many salespeople
shook their hands.
“There are basically no gaps
in the activity map,” says
Pream Raj, an assistant director
in the Singapore Health Minis-
try’s communicable-diseases di-
vision. In Singapore, he and his
associates are seeking help
from police, drawing on secu-
rity-camera footage and work-
ing with ride-hailing companies
for information to identify
which driver fetched whom.
One big puzzle piece has
been the source of the infec-
tion. Somebody brought the vi-
rus to the conference. Who?
The broader coronavirus cri-
sis goes back to December,
when Chinese authorities dis-
closed the outbreak after doz-
ens of people fell ill with pneu-
monia in Wuhan, in China’s
Hubei province. Authorities
identified it as a new strain of


ContinuedfromPageOne


provinces reported outbreaks at
penitentiaries on Friday, adding
hundreds of previously unpub-
lished cases to the official tally.
But the number of new
cases in China, 892, fell as the
nation once again changed the
way it is reporting the infec-
tions, switching back to re-
quiring a confirmed laboratory
test rather than just a clinical
diagnosis, the World Health
Organization said Friday. Glob-
ally, WHO reported more than
76,000 cases and more than
2,200 deaths.
The number of Americans

WORLD NEWS


sage sent to hundreds of the
church’s members, asking
them to evade answering
questions about the church’s
recent services. Shincheonji
later said on its website this
was the work of one follower
and not sanctioned by the
church’s leadership.
South Korean health offi-
cials said they have yet to
reach two-fifths of the roughly
1,000 Shincheonji worshipers
who attended the two services
with the 61-year-old woman.
Kang Sung-ho, a former
Shincheonji member, said fol-

lowers are told they can earn
eternal life from the church’s
founder, a man named Lee
Man-hee. At Shincheonji ser-
vices, worshipers cram to-
gether, forgoing chairs to
kneel on the floor—a gesture
to show submission to the
head of the church, he said.
They sit in circles, shaking
hands and eating together.
Shincheonji members are
instructed to not reveal their
religion to family members,
said Mr. Kang.
A Shincheonji spokeswoman
didn’t respond to requests to

comment. In a Friday state-
ment on the group’s website,
Shincheonji asked that “dis-
torted criticisms” accusing it
of being a cult be stopped.
The group, the statement
added, has disinfected and
closed churches and gathering
places at its 12 regional
“tribes.” It apologized for
causing concern due to its
members contracting the virus
and said it would cooperate
fully with local authorities.
In China, epicenter of the vi-
rus, prisons emerged as a new
flashpoint as three Chinese

who have become infected rose
to 34 and is expected to con-
tinue to climb, the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Pre-
vention said Friday. Most cases
are among the hundreds of
Americans evacuated by the
U.S. State Department from
Wuhan, China, and from a
cruise ship docked in Japan.
Japanese authorities, mean-
while, began suspending major
public gatherings to counter the
virus’s spread as the country
has become one of the biggest
infection sites outside China.
As of Friday, health authori-
ties said 105 people in Japan
had been diagnosed with the
coronavirus. That figure doesn’t
include the more than 600 peo-
ple infected on the cruise ship.
Three Japanese people have
died of the disease, including
two from the ship.
South Korea’s initial re-
sponse to the virus was praised
by many Koreans. Implementing
fast-response tactics adopted
after a criticized 2015 outbreak
of another type of coronavirus,
the country at the start of the
week had fewer cases than
China, Singapore, Hong Kong,
Thailand and Japan.
Just last week, South Ko-
rean President Moon Jae-in
told a group of business lead-
ers that it was time to resume
efforts to boost the economy
with the virus situation seem-
ingly under control.
Now, South Korea is scram-
bling. Mr. Moon in recent days
called the surge in cases a
“very severe situation” that
has created a health and eco-
nomic emergency. In Seoul,
the mayor temporarily banned
rallies at three public squares,
as permitted by the country’s
infectious-disease law.

SEOUL—South Korea, now
the most virus-hit country
outside China, reported a jump
in coronavirus cases, with
most of them linked to a
megachurch viewed as a cult
by many Koreans.
Local health officials said
Saturday that South Korea had
346 coronavirus cases, more
than doubling in the past day
and rising nearly tenfold from
the start of the week. The
country also reported its sec-
ond coronavirus-related death.
More than half of all the
cases are linked to the Shin-
cheonji Church of Jesus, located
in the southeastern city of
Daegu. Shincheonji—“new
heaven and earth” in Korean—
is a church that the South Ko-
rean government recently re-
ferred to as a “Korean cult.”
The Daegu branch, one of 74
Shincheonji churches in South
Korea, has a membership in the
multiple thousands, former
church members say. One of the
followers is a 61-year-old
woman who local authorities
believe infected dozens of oth-
ers at a pair of Sunday services
this month attended by 1,
others. Investigators have yet
to determine how the woman—
who hadn’t traveled overseas
recently—contracted Covid-19,
the illness caused by the virus.
As news of Shincheonji’s
contagion spread, media pub-
lished images of a text mes-


BYDASLYOON
ANDTIMOTHYW.MARTIN


Virus Surge in Korea Tied to Megachurch


Member of a group


some call a cult is


believed to have


spread the disease


A thermal-camera monitor showed the body temperature of people at the Seoul Railway Station in South Korea on Friday.

AHN YOUNG-JOON/ASSOCIATED PRESS

coronavirus. It spread in China,
where 74,600 people had been
sickened as of Feb. 20, accord-
ing to the World Health Organi-
zation, and there have been
1,073 confirmed cases outside
China. The WHO says more
than 2,100 people have died.
With news of new deaths
and infections globally, other
countries are drawing more
attention. South Korea re-
ported a surge in confirmed
cases on Friday. The first
deaths were reported in Iran
and among cruise-ship passen-
gers in Japan this week.
When the conference began
Jan. 19, Singapore had no con-
firmed cases. The gathering
was a 2020 sales kickoff hosted
by U.K.-based Servomex Group
Ltd. For four days, guests from
around the world mingled at
Grand Hyatt Singapore.
A dance troupe performed
traditional shows in elaborate
costumes to entertain the
guests, and with Lunar New
Year around the corner, the
mood was festive.
Some participants were
from China, including Hubei
province, Singapore health of-
ficials later learned.
The first report of trouble
came from Malaysia, 10 days
after most attendees left Singa-
pore. A 41-year-old Malaysian
participant had traveled to his
hometown in the country’s
north, according to the activity
map investigators compiled. By
the time he returned to the
central Malaysian town where
he works, he had a cough and
fever. On Feb. 3, doctors con-
firmed he had the coronavirus.
Malaysian health authori-
ties notified Singapore coun-
terparts, who soon put their
virus sleuths into action. First,
they got the list of 109 partici-
pants and learned 94 weren’t
from Singapore.
They activated international
communication channels to let
other governments know which
of their nationals were at the
conference. “We informed them
pretty early on,” Mr. Raj says,
“before it started to balloon.”
A Servomex spokesman says
the company worked closely
with public-health authorities
and put preventive measures
in place as new information
about the infections emerged,
such as restricting employee
travel and asking conference
attendees to self-isolate.
In Malaysia, health investi-
gators grilled the 41-year-old
patient for details about where
he had been, which flights he
took, who picked him up from
the airport and other details,
Malaysian health officials say.
Virus sleuths there compiled a
list of 74 people he had come in
contact with—family, friends,
doctors, nurses. They contacted
those people one by one, seek-
ing phone numbers and ad-
dresses along the way.

the people Mr. Walsh had
stayed with to a lodge not far
from the region’s famous
slopes, French health authori-
ties and the mayor say. Author-
ities identified 11 close contacts,
including the lodge’s owner and
his three children, the mayor
says. All were at high risk of
transmission, and health au-
thorities transported them in
sanitized emergency vehicles to
three nearby hospitals, the
French health ministry says.
Their test results began
coming back positive that same
day. Mr. Jacquet says a senior
health official called him at 1
a.m. confirming the virus had
in fact reached the remote
town, and by 3 a.m. health offi-
cials established a local crisis
center. The next day, the inves-
tigation widened with each
confirmed case—five in total,
including a 9-year-old boy.
The child’s infection set off
a challenging inquiry, says
Jean-Marc Peillex, the mayor
of neighboring Saint-Gervais-
les-Bains. Officials tried to re-
construct what happened over
the days the boy’s virus was
undetected, piecing together
interviews with children, who
don’t always remember whose
hand they touched or how
many people were in a room.
They determined the boy
attended regular classes at one
school and French lessons at
another in a neighboring town.
Widening their search, they
learned he had taken an exam
sometime between Jan. 24 and
Feb. 7 at a Montessori school
in another nearby town. Au-
thorities closed all three
schools for more than a week.
Virus sleuths kept finding
new cases linked to Mr. Walsh.
U.K. health officials detected
one in the U.K. related to the
France cluster. Some 830 miles
south on the island of Mallorca,
where another man had traveled
from France, local health au-
thorities confirmed another case
onFeb.9.Thenextday,U.K.au-
thorities linked four more cases
to Mr. Walsh. The government
there called the virus a “serious
and imminent threat.”
Of the four cases, Public
Health England discovered two
were health-care workers
south of London. Yvonne Doyle,
Public Health England’s medi-
cal director, said in a statement
that officials worked to iden-
tify patients and colleagues the
two might have exposed.
Health officials say Mr.
Walsh has recovered. “I’m
happy to be home and feeling
well,” he said in a statement.
Singapore authorities ha-
ven’t reported deaths among
the conference-goers. They
still don’t know how the virus
got there, Mr. Raj says.
—Chester Tay
in Kuala Lumpur
and Matthew Dalton in Paris
contributed to this article.

Conference


Spreads


Coronavirus


He shared holiday meals with
his family and rode in a car with
his sister. She told them she had
a sore throat; a test came back
positive for coronavirus. His
mother-in-law, who complained
of a headache and fatigue but
no fever, also had the disease,
Malaysia’s health ministry says.
The man and his mother-in-law
have recovered, and his sister is
under treatment.
The infected Malaysian had
dined with an associate from
South Korea at the conference.
After his Feb. 3 diagnosis, he
contacted the associate with a
warning: Get yourself tested.
After the conference, the

South Korean had flown to his
country’s main international
airport, taken the airport ex-
press to Seoul and eaten at a
soft-tofu restaurant, according
to South Korea’s Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention,
then took a high-speed train to
his hometown of Daegu.
He spent the night at his
parents’ home, visited his par-
ents-in-law the next day, then
boarded a train back to Seoul.
He rode the subway, then took
a cab home. Even before he
heard from his Malaysian
friend, the man felt flulike
symptoms, says Lee Wang-jun,
chairman at Myongji Hospital,
which treated him. The man
made trips to medical facilities,
stopped at a rice-congee store
and visited a supermarket.

Globalization is
complicating the
task of responding
to epidemics.

CONFERENCE
INSINGAPORE

FRANCE

U.K. SPAIN

SOUTHKOREA MALAYSIA

Steve Walsh vacationed in France.
Five people there tested positive.
Two of the five were members of
the same family.

After Mr. Walsh tested
positive, five other
cases were reported.

A man who traveled from
France tested positive in
Mallorca.

One attendee returned
home. His sister and his
mother-in-law tested
positive.

Three of 15 attendees
from Singapore were
infected. There's no
evidence that they
infected others.

There’s no evidence the
two colleagues who flew
Infected prior to travel back infected others.
Diagnosed case

InfectiousTravel
After four international travelers
attended a Singapore conference and
contracted coronavirus, 13 others
linked to them tested positive.

Sources: investigators; health authorities
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