The Wall Street Journal - 22.02.2020 - 23.02.2020

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