Prime Minister Han Deok-soo announced on the 19th that “additional measures to cope with the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases will be announced at the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters on the 20th.”
At the appointment ceremony of the ‘National Infectious Disease Crisis Response Advisory Committee’ (advisory committee) held at the government complex in Seoul on the same day, Prime Minister Han said, “Today, the number of confirmed cases has exceeded 70,000. I wonder if this will happen,” he said.
The measures under consideration are △Securing additional beds by ordering beds to operate, △Expanding testing stations available on weekends, △Limiting face-to-face visits to nursing hospitals and facilities, the prime minister said.
The advisory committee, officially appointed on the same day, was established under the Prime Minister’s Office in accordance with Prime Minister’s Ordinance No. Thirteen medical experts, including Professor Ki-seok Ki-seok of Hallym University College of Medicine, Professor Nam-joong Kim of Seoul National University College of Medicine, Dong-hyun Kim of Hallym University College of Medicine, and Professor Ye-jin Kim of Sungkyunkwan University College of Medicine, will participate. In the field of socio-economics, eight people, including Kwon Jeong-hyeon, a research fellow at the Korea Development Institute (KDI) and Kim Seon-bin, a professor of economics at Yonsei University, will join the team.
The Advisory Committee provides advice to the Prime Minister in order to support the establishment of professional quarantine measures in a crisis situation of the spread of infectious diseases.
By Han Kyung-woo, reporter at Hankyung.com case@hankyung.com
