Fight Against COVID-19: The South Korea Story

While the whole world is struggling to deal with the exponential impact of this virus. Time has come that we should look at those countries who have made some proactive efforts, analyse their strategies and try to act accordingly.

It is simple and much visible fact that countries have taken this coronavirus threat with different pace and priorities. For example, USA, Italy, Iran and Spain are finding it really tough to control this pandemic, on the other hand, few countries such as South Korea have set an example of restricting the growth of this virus among their countrymen.

So, in this series, on a positive note, we should understand their strategies and activities and analyse with the situations of India.

In December 2019 South Korean authorities called an emergency meeting and discussed some samples that they collected from a family of four people who recently visited China in December 2019 and started developing some symptoms of a viral infection which was strange and have certain different growth behaviour and at that point, China was started showing some glimpse of what has happened to the country after a few weeks.

So, in that meeting, the South Korean authorities have invited pharmaceutical companies and gave them a task of developing a detection kit at mass level.

Now, their strategy at that point of time was focused on preparedness to detect and test the common people across their country. On sometime close to to the start of the Chinese new year, which was around 23 January 2020, the South Korean authorities again called an emergency meeting and ordered a nationwide mass level COVID-19 testing campaign. Within a few weeks, the data collected by this exercise carried huge relevance for their nationwide fight against Coronavirus pandemic. Apart from issuing travel guidelines, and ensuring medical support at necessary places such as airports and Railway stations, the South Koreans have managed to test as many as over 300,000 people for this COVID-19.

Now, in this viral infection, an early detection is also a major achievement and if detected early, this can be controlled easily as compared to an advanced level patient.

Now this being a reason, we are discussing South Korea as a success story in Fight Against Coronavirus.

So, more and more tests can help us in taking full control over the situation and this should be practised.

The only important and worth-full lesson learned from this analysis is that more testing kits can help in restricting this virus. More COVID-19 tests can ensure early detections of patients and can help them in fast recovery.

No, doubt Indian authorities have done responsible work in taking actions such as early travel restrictions from China and lockdown. The guidelines from the Government authorities must be followed properly by the citizens in order to stay agile towards restricting Coronavirus pandemic.

One message is very clear, this fight can only be fought by staying together and staying united against COVID-19.