South Korea is the First Country to announce the second wave of Coronavirus?
South Korea is in the midst of a “second wave” of coronavirus infections, health officials claimed on Monday. It is the First Country to announce the second wave of Coronavirus.
Until now the country had been hailed a success story for its handling of the worldwide virus pandemic. However, the Korea Centers for Disease Control (KCDC) said on Monday that a rise in new cases signaled a second wave in the capital of Seoul.
Health minister Park Neung-hoo said 90 imported cases had been identified over the past week, a sharp rise from the previous week’s 48.
He said: The government faces a grave situation as health officials need not only to contain locally transmitted infections but also to manage imported cases.
Countries including Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Iran have reported indications of a second wave in numbers of coronavirus cases, but South Korea is the first to have officially acknowledged it.
The KCDC had previously said South Korea’s first wave had never really ended.
Numbers have stayed low throughout the crisis. At the end of February, the country reported a peak of more than 900 cases in a day, in the first large outbreak of the coronavirus outside of China, but an intensive tracking and testing campaign reduced the numbers to single digits by late April.
But just as the country announced it would be easing social distancing guidelines in early May, new cases spiked, driven in part by infections among young people who visited nightclubs and bars in Seoul over a national holiday weekend in early May.
On Monday, KCDC director Jeong Eun-Kyong said it had become clear that the holiday weekend marked the beginning of a new wave of infections focused on the greater Seoul area, which had previously seen few cases. For more click here.
