A18 eZ re THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, MARCH 14 , 2020
The coronavirus outbreak
The first few flights she tried
— at skyrocketing prices —
wouldn’t let her book, saying
that the seat in question had
already been reserved. Kalman
ultimately found a ticket on Nor-
wegian — f rom Barcelona to Oslo
to JFK — that cost more than
$1,100 on an airline known for
budget fares.
“Thirty-four or thirty-five
minutes later, they came back
and said, oops, this doesn’t apply
to U. S. citizens — but the damage
was already done,” she said.
“This has affected so many peo-ple so enormously because a man
can’t read.”
The uncertainty continued on
arrival, said Moore, with no
screening of any kind at P hiladel-
phia International Airport on
Thursday.
“The strangest thing about
coming home: There was noth-
ing. We walked right through
customs. No one did anything;
no one said a word. If this is
serious enough to enact a travel
ban for, then shouldn’t they have
screenings in place?”
[email protected]VeronIQue De VIguerIe/AgenCe FrAnCe-Presse/getty ImAges
T ravelers wait to get on flights to the United States at Paris’s
Charles de Gaulle Airport. One said: “That was the most stressful
morning. People didn’t know what to do, where to go.”BY MIN JOO KIM
AND SIMON DENYERseoul — I t was 2 a.m. when Kim
Do-gyun called South Korea’s c or-
onavirus hotline. He had a fever
after returning from Malaysia.
The hotline advice: Get t ested.
Hours later, the 3 5-year-old w as
at a nearby drive-through t est site.
A medic in a hazmat suit stuck a
swab on a long stick into his nose
to take a sample. The whole p roce-
dure took two minutes.
The next morning, March 7, he
received a text message from the
testing center. The results were
negative.
Kim is one of more than
240,000 people who have been
tested f or the coronavirus i n South
Korea — or about one test per
every 250 p eople, a mong t he high-
est testing r ates in the w orld.
More than 10,000 tests have
been administered each day over
the past few weeks since a sudden
spike i n infections in t he southern
city of Daegu i n late February.
From drive-through kiosks to
hospitals t o local c linics, h undreds
of test s ites are available a cross the
country, and the tests are largely
free. For the e lderly o r those too i ll
to step out, medics visit their
homes to take swabs for t esting.
South Korea’s testing blitz has
emerged as one of the models for
rapid and comprehensive re-
sponses as some other countries,
including the United States, lag
well behind.
On Friday, the Trump adminis-
tration — under fire for the slow
U.S. testing response — an-
nounced steps seeking to boost
the availability of coronavirus
tests, i ncluding g iving $ 1.3 million
to two companies to develop one-
hour tests.
South Korea’s planning dates t o
a 2015 outbreak of Middle East
respiratory syndrome, or MERS.
Then, the limited availability of
test kits was blamed for aggravat-
ing the epidemic, which killed
38 people a round the country.
That experience led the Seoul
government to introduce an
“emergency usage approval” sys-
tem, which allowed for a fast-track
approval for test kits during any
outbreaks.
On Feb. 4, two weeks after
South Korea reported its first cor-
onavirus case, the government
gave “emergency approval” for
Seoul-based Kogene Biotech tomove ahead w ith the test k its.
The company already had lab
work underway for the test kits,
anticipating that the coronavirus
would spill o ver from C hina.
Production has been steadily
ramped up to 10,000 kits a week.
Each kit can administer 50 tests,
and each person is tested twice on
average for accuracy. That leaves
the potential to test 250,000 peo-
ple a week.
Kogene currently exports test
kits for the novel virus to 35 coun-
tries in Asia, Europe and the Mid-
dle E ast.
It was a similar story in China,
which f aced t he outbreak of severe
acute respiratory syndrome, or
SARS, in 2002-03 a nd h ad plans in
place to expand testing dramati-
cally t his time around.
But Japan, largely bypassed by
those epidemics, has been much
slower on getting test kits to the
public.
In the United States, the furor
has been growing. U.S. public
health experts, politicians — and
anxious people seeking tests —
have grown increasingly alarmed
about the l ack of testing across t he
United States, which has run only
about 14,000 tests at the Centersfor Disease Control and Preven-
tion and its network of public
health laboratories, according to
data updated Thursday.
U.S. officials have acknowl-
edged they do not know h ow many
tests are running at hospital labs
or by companies, although those
capabilities are just coming online
this week.
“I’m being asked over and over
again why the United States is so
far behind other countries and
why the American people cannot
get tested,” Rep. Carolyn B. Malo-
ney (D-N.Y.) said at a House Over-
sight and Reform Committee
Hearing earlier this week. “South
Korea can test more people in one
day than we tested over the past
two months.”
Critics, including former FDA
commissioner from the Trump ad-
ministration Scott Gottlieb, began
arguing in early February that U. S.
officials should have been doing
more to encourage hospital labo-
ratories and companies to speed
up test development and increase
capacity. But the nation instead
remained reliant on its backbone
of public health laboratories,
which have limited capacity to
scale up.Things are beginning to im-
prove. U.S.-based companies have
started to manufacture test kits
and hospital labs have been given
new flexibility to test. In some
areas, including q uarantined New
Rochelle, N.Y., drive-through test-
ing is being set up to emulate
South Korea’s successes.
But the U. S. health system is
still playing catch-up.
“The system i s not really geared
to what we need right now, what
you a re a sking f or. That i s a failing.
Let’s admit it,” said Anthony
S. Fauci, director of the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases at a congressional hear-
ing Thursday.
“The idea of anybody getting it
easily the way other people are
doing it, w e are not set up for that,”
he added. “Do I think we should
be? Yes, b ut we’re not.”
South Korean officials credit
the e ase of t esting — a nd the waiv-
ing of most medical fees — with
allowing for quicker quarantines
and o ther a ctions t o try to contain
the virus. Nearly 8,000 confirmed
cases have been detected in South
Korea with 6 6 deaths.
The test, normally about $134,
is free for anyone with a doctor’sreferral or for those who came in
contact with an infected person.
South Korean government also
covers the full cost of medical
treatment for every coronavirus
patient in t he country.
“I felt nervous waiting for the
test result, but at least I did not
have to worry about money,” said
Kim, who used the drive-in center
near his home in Namgyangju
neighboring Seoul.
South Korea encourages even
undocumented foreigners to get
tested for the virus, and public
health officials are not obliged to
report their status.
“Immigration authorities will
not c ollect information o f undocu-
mented immigrants who get test-
ed for the virus, or inspect hospi-
tals for such instances,” South Ko-
rea’s Justice Ministry said in a
statement late January. “So please
visit a nearby health center to get
tested for the virus if you have
symptoms related to the new coro-
navirus.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Denyer reported from tokyo. Carolyn
y. Johnson in Washington contributed
to this report.Testing blitz in South Korea emerges as a model for others to emulate
BY JAMES MCAULEYparis — T he last United Airlines
flight to Washington Dulles In-
ternational Airport was can-
celed, and the lines of anxious
travelers at Paris Charles de
Gaulle Airport extended farther
than the eye could see.
On Friday, the day before Pres-
ident Trump’s restrictions on Eu-
ropean travelers were to take
effect, there was an atmosphere
of mayhem and chaos at major
European airports, a s passengers
with E.U. passports struggled to
get onto U.S.-bound flights be-
fore it was too late.
One o f them w as Jean-Bernard
Cadier, a French journalist based
in Washington, D.C., for France’s
BFM television network. He was
originally booked to travel back
to Washington next week, but
after rumors began to circulate
about potential border closures,
he said he changed his flight to
March 15 to be safe.
Then came T rump’s a nnounce-
ment Wednesday, and he re-
booked once again — t his t ime on
United Airlines Flight 914 from
Charles de Gaulle to Dulles on
Friday, a ticket he was lucky to
confirm. But as soon as Cadier
and the other passengers board-
ed the plane, the aircraft had a
mechanical issue. The pilot can-
celed the flight.
“That was the most stressful
morning,” Cadier said. “People
didn’t know what to do, where to
go.”
Waiting in line to reclaim his
baggage, he booked himself a
last-minute flight to New York’s
John F. Kennedy International
Airport on Norwegian Air Shut-
tle via Expedia, but then said
airline employees told him that
he qualified for a rebooking on
Air France because he had a valid
U. S. work visa. He was due to
arrive at JFK on Friday night and
at Reagan National Airport on
Saturday.
This frantic trajectory — the
rumors of border closures, the
changing f lights, the last-minute
bookings, often at premium pric-
es — was increasingly common
across Europe on Friday as Euro-
peans who were not also U.S.
citizens or permanent residentsdid everything they could to get
back to the United States for
work or to return to their fami-
lies.
“ I would not criticize [Trump]
too hard on this, which is a first
for me,” Cadier said. “Because I
think it’s so difficult to be an
executive these days that we
don’t know. So he’s very easy to
criticize o n this one. I was per-
sonally shocked on a personal
point of view, because it was
going to affect my life deeply. But
as a policy, I don’t know.”
Friday saw Europeans but also
more Americans cutting their
trips short and coming home
early, after thousands of U.S.
travelers descended on Europe-
an airports early Thursday, h ours
after Trump i nitially announced
that all European travel to the
U. S. would be suspended, a claim
the White House later walked
back by clarifying that U. S. citi-
zens and permanent residents
would be exempted.
“What does it mean to ban
travel? Is it just Americans or
was it foreign nationals? I’m
pretty sure they hadn’t figured
out anywhere near the logistics
they needed,” said Meghan
Moore, who was traveling in
Paris with her husband whenTrump made his speech.
The two were already con-
firmed to return to Philadelphia
on American Airlines on Thurs-
day, but she said they went to the
airport at around 4 a.m., shortly
after learning of Trump’s an-
nouncement. By the time the
ticket counters opened at 6:
a.m., there were at least 1,
people in line, Moore estimated.
Not everyone heard the White
House’s subsequent clarification
about U.S. citizens in time. One
particular example is that of
American parents whose chil-
dren were studying in Europe.
Stefanie Kalman, director of
sales and marketing for Hilton
Worldwide Holdings, said she
was at home on Long Island
watching Trump’s address on
CNN on Wednesday night and
flew onto the computer to book
her college-age daughter an
emergency flight home f rom B ar-
celona to JFK.
Although the progression of
coronavirus in Europe had made
it clear that her daughter and
fellow students would have to
return home earlier than expect-
ed, Kalman said, she was not
expecting a deadline within 48
hours.Anxiety soars at E.U. airports on eve of travel ban
Travelers scramble
t o secure tickets for
U.S.-bound flightsinto comprehensive digital maps.
One of the most visited, coro-
namap.site, developed by a South
Korean college student, has
drawn more than 14 million hits
since the outbreak.
South Korea has been prepar-
ing for this moment. Its strategies
have root in a 2015 outbreak of
Middle East respiratory syn-
drome, or MERS, in South Korea,
which was the biggest outside of
Saudi Arabia.
The government in Seoul was
criticized for holding back data
about the hospitals treating
MERS patients. South Korea later
revised its laws to grant greater
access to personal information of
infected people. Now, anyone
found guilty of lying about details
considered necessary for infec-
tion containment can be subject
to a maximum of two years in
prison.
It’s u nclear how much of SouthKorea’s tracking has lessened the
number of possible infections. A
certainty t hough, is that it has
attracted “voyeuristic gazes from
the people,” said Yoon In-jin, a
professor of sociology at Korea
University in Seoul.
“A month into this nationwide
experiment, we have yet to gauge
its epidemiological effectiveness,
but already saw too many virus
patients getting ridiculed and
judged for places they visited,”
Yoon said.
Even with names redacted,
there are cases where enough
information was made public to
deduce the patient’s identity.
A South Korean — the third
confirmed coronavirus patient in
the country — was savaged by
online trolls after it was revealed
that he, while symptomatic, ac-
companied a Chinese woman to a
hotel and a plastic surgery clinic
in the upmarket Gangnam dis-trict in Seoul.
The woman also tested posi-
tive for the coronavirus. Online
comments labeled them “a cou-
ple in extramarital affair” and
accused them of “super-spread-
ing” the virus across the city.
Lee Wang-jun, chairman of
Myongji Hospital where the pa-
tient was treated, said the man
received psychiatric treatment
after the online attacks.
“It’s time for us to look back at
the side effects,” said Cho Sung-il,
an epidemiologist at Seoul Na-
tional University who advises
South Korea’s coronavirus trac-
ing team, “and ponder ways to
minimize the impact on people’s
privacy.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Denyer reported from tokyo. Akiko
Kashiwagi in tokyo contributed to
this report.JeAn CHung For tHe WAsHIngton Post
People line up to buy face masks at a pharmacy in Seoul on Wednesday. South Korea’s patient-tracking
initiative has raised questions about how to reconcile public health protection and privacy.BY MIN JOO KIM
AND SIMON DENYERseoul — The novel coronavirus
outbreak has produced at least
one new star in South Korea: the
“virus patient travel log.”
The South Korean government
is publishing the movements of
people before they were diag-
nosed with the virus — retracing
their steps using tools such as
GPS phone tracking, credit card
records, surveillance video and
old-fashioned personal inter-
views with patients.
The idea is to let the public
know, via a central website and
regional text messages, if they
may have crossed paths with
carriers, whose names are not
made public.
But where some people per-
ceive good intentions, others see
Big Brother.
The extensive tracking initia-
tive has raised questions about
how to reconcile public health
protection and privacy — a grow-
ing point of tension in many
places around the world as the
pandemic spreads.
Others nations in Asia quickly
adopted their own version of
South Korea’s infection mapping.
Singapore’s government hosts
a website that includes the age,
gender and occupation of all its
coronavirus patients — and
where they traveled recently.
Japan’s Health Ministry has
maintained caution about the
release of personal travel history
and other details, but some Japa-
nese regions have made public
information about patients’
movements, including to gyms,
restaurants and hospitals.
But challenges are brewing in
South Korea.
In t he southern city of Busan, a
coronavirus patient whose per-
sonal travel history was released
filed an appeal about privacy
violations to the National Human
Rights Commission, the nation’s
rights watchdog agency.
The commission appeared to
back the complaint. In a state-
ment earlier this week, it called
the public disclosures of personal
movements “beyond necessity.”People want more
In r esponse, South Korean offi-
cials note the obvious: These are
not normal times. South Korea
has nearly 8,000 confirmed coro-
navirus infections and at least 66
deaths.
“It is true that public interests
tend to be emphasized more than
human rights of individuals
when dealing with diseases that
can infect others,” Jeong Eun-
kyeong, director of Korea Centers
for Disease Control and Preven-
tion, said last week.
Jeong said the agency will
review the protocols to find the
right “balance” between health
measures and individual privacy.
But, for many, t he travel log is a
hit the way it is — and they want
even more.
“The phone is ringing off the
hook with nervous citizens de-
manding that more is shared
about confirmed virus cases in a
faster manner,” said Park Wyul-
bohk, head of the disaster team in
Cheonan, about 50 miles south of
Seoul with about 100 confirmed
cases of the novel coronavirusthat causes the disease covid-19.
A Cheonan resident launched
a petition to South Korean Presi-
dent Moon Jae-in complaining of
the “nerve-racking delay” in the
public release of additional virus
carrier travel logs. The petition
drew more than 22,000 support-
ers.
The names on the travel logs
are kept confidential. But there
are possibly awkward revelations
about the personal lives of pa-
tients — whose identities could
be easily figured out by family
and friends.‘Love hotels’ on the list
In central city of Daejeon,
more than 1 million phones re-
ceived an alert saying a virus
carrier visited “Magic Coin Kara-
oke in Jayang-dong at midnight
on Feb. 20.”
In Cheonan, a text alert to
residents showed that an infect-
ed person visited “Imperial Foot
Massage at 13:46 on Feb. 24.”
The digital diaries of infected
people grew to cover all kinds of
places: bars, karaoke clubs and
short-stay “love hotels.”
One woman, who asked to be
identified only with her surname
Seo out of privacy concerns, said
she has stopped going to a bar
popular with gay women.
“If I unknowingly contract the
virus... that record will be
released to the whole country,”
Seo said. “It’s as daunting as
being outed in front of the pub-
lic.”
At the start, the South Korean
disease-control center was alone
with the details: lists of con-
firmed cases, sex, age and pre-
quarantine movements. It wasn’t
long before private coders saw
the potential for audience views.
Several apps have turned the dataSouth Korea’s patient mapping
adds to concerns over privacy
Names are redacted, but
extensive tracking
has led to complaints