39
registration forms, hazmat-suited staff performed a
COVID-19 test through a crack in his car window.
Afterward, officials sprayed disinfectant on his car’s
exterior and Park drove straight home, obeying strict
instructions to stay indoors and avoid human con-
tact. “By the time I awoke the next morning, I had
a text message saying that I’d tested negative,” he
tells TIME.
At the start of the coronavirus outbreak, South
Korea had been caught off guard; a slow initial rate of
infection quickly metastasized in mid-February. But
unlike in the U.S., which confirmed its first COVID-
19 case one day after South Korea, a robust public
health response kept reported cases under 11,000.
Compared with the U.S., South Korea on a per capita
basis tested three times as many citizens.
The ability to test and trace every infection and
their contacts is one of six conditions the WHO says
should be met before any society can reopen, and
South Korea shows you don’t have to be an autocratic
system like China’s to introduce these kinds of ex-
pansive measures. By April 24, more than 589,000
Koreans had been tested in the same way as Park
Hong-cheol, in large part at drive-through and walk-
through facilities that delivered quick results. The
government provided free smartphone apps that re-
layed emergency SMS alerts about spikes in infec-
tions in neighborhoods, and updated national and
local government websites that tracked cases. Infec-
tions with only mild symptoms were treated at tem-
porary facilities to allow hospitals to concentrate on
the most acute cases. As a result, South Korea suc-
cessfully flattened the curve in 20 days without ex-
treme draconian restrictions on freedom or move-
ment. “The faster we find the contacts, the better we
are able to stem further spread of the virus,” South
Korean Health and Welfare Minister Park Neung-
hoo tells TIME. Still, he adds, “finding a midpoint
between economic activities and containing an epi-
demic outbreak is a delicate balancing act.”
Swift, decisive action has no doubt lessened the
economic hit South Korea will have to bear (although
its economy still shrank 1.4% in the first quarter of
the year). Park, the Health Minister, says test re-
sults that arrive in minutes, not days, are “critical”
to effective contact tracing. Then anonymized GPS
data from an infected person’s cell phone can be
used to automatically alert via SMS those people
who had recently been in the same vicinity to get
tested themselves. Other methods use interviews,
security cameras and credit-card data to trace in-
fected people. Hong Kong and Taiwan have enjoyed
similar success.
The U.S. is poorly positioned to follow. For one,
problems in the supply and capacity of testing kits
mean it typically takes several days for results—and
that delay exponentially increases the potential for
infected people to expose others. For another, there
are only around 2,200 professional contact tracers
in the U.S., and health experts say 100,000 more are
desperately needed. In China, around 9,000 contact
tracers were employed in Wuhan alone.
There are also privacy issues; Americans gener-
ally don’t want their telecom companies to share their
GPS data with government agencies, even if rendered
anonymous and used to fight an extraordinary health
crisis. Apple and Google are currently collaborating
on an app that will use geodata to facilitate contact
tracing—but, they insist, on a voluntarily opt-in, self-
reporting basis.
And the app may not be ready for weeks, “It is
very, very difficult to get people to opt into any-
thing,” says Kai-Fu Lee, a venture capitalist; former
Google, Microsoft and Apple executive; and author
of AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New
World Order. “It begs the question of which is more
1. SOUTH
KOREA’S response
to coronavirus
centered on mass,
rapid-results
public testing, like
this scene outside
Seoul’s Yangji
hospital on
March 17, and
extensive contact
tracing
2. NEW ZEALAND
moved for an early
lockdown, which
proved crucial,
as did additional
social-distancing
measures, like
this queue at
a Wellington
supermarket
on April 11
3. SINGAPORE’S
initial response left
behind its more
than 1 million
migrant workers,
many of whom live
in cramped housing,
like the Punggol S11
dormitory, seen on
April 18
2 3
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