尽管最近在新的冠状病毒病例大幅下降的情况下重新开业，但韩国政府发布了一项全国性的健康建议，要求酒吧和夜总会关闭30多天，此前卫生官员追踪了13个新病例，发现一个人去了韩国首都首尔的五家夜总会和酒吧。
“我们相信我们会有另一个社区感染，”卫生部副部长金钢利在周五的新闻发布会上说。“传播发生在封闭和拥挤的空间。没有已知传染源的传播可能导致广泛的集群感染，这就是为什么政府没有放松警惕。”
这名男子在参观夜店时没有任何症状。据合众国际社通讯社报道，他最终在周三检测呈阳性，并获准进入首尔南部城市水原的一家医院。
官员们认为他可能在晚上外出时接触了1500多人。市政府官员现在使用闭路电视和信用卡记录来帮助识别游客，并鼓励他们自我隔离，并立即向当地医院报告任何冠状病毒症状。
2020年4月22日，一对戴着口罩的夫妇走在首尔的一个市场上，对COVID-19新型冠状病毒表示担忧。
随着新案例的减少，韩国最近允许宗教场所、博物馆场馆、娱乐设施和夜总会恢复营业。该国的高中将于下周开始复课，其初中将在整个五月逐步复课。
然而，类似于美国许多州的重新开放计划，韩国已经表示，如果出现新病例，将撤回并取消重新开放。
尽管韩国的冠状病毒病例数最初在2月末和3月初出现爆炸，但该国卫生部努力开展严格的接触者追踪，联系任何去过冠状病毒确诊病例患者所在场所的人。通过结合采访和手机监控，这些病人和他们邻居身边的任何人都被广泛测试，并被鼓励进行自我隔离。
据报道，在3月的前两周，韩国每日新增病例从800例下降到不足100例大西洋。
由于2002年严重急性呼吸系统综合症(非典)爆发和2015年中东呼吸系统综合症(中东呼吸系统综合症)流行，该国无疑学会了如何有效管理病毒爆发。两者都是冠状病毒的早期形式，在结构上不同于COVID-19新型冠状病毒。
在MERS爆发期间，政府重写了法律，允许“快速和免费的检测，广泛的追踪技术，以及强制隔离最严重的病例”大西洋写作。这三件事让它能够紧急应对COVID-19。
在冠状病毒出现之初，政府敦促医疗公司迅速开发检测试剂盒，并通知制造商为增加产量做准备。政府随后开放了600个国家检测中心和免下车检测点，以确保医院不会被不知情的患者所淹没。
当一个公民成为确诊病例时，政府会发送一条短信，敦促人们访问一个网站，该网站会显示该人的旅行路线和漫游地点。然后，政府利用监控录像和信用卡号码，联系任何可能与感染者有过交集的人——这是隐私和公共健康之间的一种权衡，大多数公民似乎都接受这一点，认为这是应对偶尔爆发的流行病的代价。
卫生官员一天检查两次被隔离的人，并鼓励他们使用不同于室友使用的毛巾、盘子和浴室。该国还要求任何来自外国的游客下载一个应用程序，记录他们第一次到达时的健康症状，然后在几天后要求症状更新。
SOUTH KOREA, HAILED FOR PANDEMIC RESPONSE, BACKTRACKS ON REOPENING AFTER COVID-19 CASES JUMP
Despite recently reopening businesses amid an impressive decline in new coronavirus case, the South Korean government has issued a nationwide health advisory for bars and nightclubs to close down for 30 more days after health officials tracked 13 new cases to a single person who attended five nightclubs and bars in the country's capital city of Seoul.
"We believe we will have another community infection," said Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip at a Friday press briefing. "The spread took place in enclosed and crowded spaces. Transmission with no known source of infection can lead to a widespread cluster infection and that is why the government is not letting its guard down."
The man in question had no symptoms when he visited the nightspots. He eventually tested positive on Wednesday and gained admittance to a hospital in Suwon, a city south of Seoul, according to the UPI wire service.
Officials think he may have come in contact with over 1,500 people during his night out. City officials are now using CCTV and credit card records to help identify visitors and are encouraging them to self-isolate and immediately report any coronavirus symptoms to local hospitals.
A couple wearing face masks amid concerns over the COVID-19 novel coronavirus walks through a market in Seoul on April 22, 2020.
With a decline in new cases, South Korea has allowed places of worship, museums venues, recreational facilities and nightclubs to recently resume business. The country's high schools begin reopening next week and its lower schools will gradually reopen throughout May.
However, similar to the reopening plans of many U.S. states, South Korea has said it will pull back on and reverse reopenings if new cases emerge.
While the number of coronavirus cases in South Korea originally exploded in late February and early March, the country's Ministry of Health worked hard to conduct rigorous contact tracing, contacting anyone who had attended venues where patients with confirmed cases of coronavirus had gone. Using a combination of interviews and cellphone surveillance, anyone in proximity to these patients and their neighbors were widely tested and all encouraged to self-quarantine.
Within the first two weeks of March, new daily cases in South Korea declined from 800 to fewer than 100, according to The Atlantic.
The country undoubtedly learned how to effectively manage viral outbreaks due to its 2002 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak and its 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) epidemic. Both are earlier forms of coronavirus that differ structurally from the COVID-19 novel coronavirus.
During its MERS outbreak, the government rewrote its laws to allow "fast and free testing, expansive tracing technology, and mandatory isolation of the most severe cases," The Atlantic writes. These three things allowed it to tackle COVID-19 with urgency.
At the start of the coronavirus, the government urged medical companies to rapidly develop testing kits and informed manufacturers to prepare for their increased production. The government then opened up 600 national testing centers and drive-through testing spots to ensure that hospitals wouldn't be overwhelmed with unaware patients experiencing symptoms.
When a citizen becomes a confirmed case, the government sends out a text message urging people to visit a website that shows the travel routes and places that person had wandered. Using security camera footage and credit card numbers, the government then contacts anyone who might have crossed paths with the infected individual—a trade-off between privacy and public health that most citizens seem to accept as a price of navigating occasional epidemics.
People who go into quarantine are checked on twice a day by health officials and encouraged to use different towels, dishes and bathrooms than the ones used by their housemates. The country also requires anyone visiting from foreign countries to download an app that records their health symptoms when they first arrive and then requires symptom updates for days afterward.
