Just days after reopening, schools across South Korea closed its doors again in order to contain a relapse in its capital, Seoul, and its surrounding metropolis.
Seoul’s metropolitan area, which houses almost half of the country’s entire population, had its parks, galleries, museums and other public entities closed after a sudden resurgence threatened a potential second wave of the pandemic. All public events will also be suspended along for the next two weeks. Inter and intra national travel has also been banned.
Almost a 100 of the new cases have been linked to the logistics centre in Bucheon, forcing everyone working there as well as those who had been working in the centre into self-quarantine.
In a press briefing, Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip said that so far, 3,836 people out of 4,351 workers and visitors at the center had been tested, and that any student or teacher living in a household with a worker at the center should stay home.
South Korea has been a model for ways to contain the virus outbreak without rigorous lockdown, but its struggle to prevent new outbreaks of the disease despite the stringent measures highlights the difficulties other nations can expect to face as they ease lockdown restrictions.