Andres Sanchez Braun |
Osong (South Korea) (EFE).- With the Covid-19 crisis still unresolved, South Korean epidemiological researchers, whose role during the pandemic has been unanimously praised, are already training intensely to be able to track the next virus highly contagious to appear.
Despite technological advances -in South Korea, GPS tracking of mobile phones was essential to trace contagion routes at the beginning of the pandemic-, contact tracing continues to require face-to-face work based on exhausting and exhaustive interviews with those infected.
Also the use of mathematics and statistics to try to predict the behavior of a pathogen and its impact on public health.
This was highlighted by Lee Sang-won, general director of public health emergency planning at the Korea Communicable Disease Prevention and Control Agency (KDCA) during a workshop held at its headquarters in Osong (107 kilometers southeast of Seoul). to show the media how they work.
The 107 KDCA epidemiological investigators and another 500 trackers from local authorities have not stopped working in recent years, whether it was investigating outbreaks such as Hepatitis A in 2019 or MERS-Cov, which in 2015 terrorized the Asian country, leaving 38 dead.
Thus until the arrival of Covid-19 in 2020, where the team dazzled the world with its tracking capacity by detecting cases such as that of South Korean patient 31, a follower of the Shincheonji Christian sect who was linked to more than 1,100 contacts. .
The interviews with her were key to preventing the outbreak – which directly caused some 5,000 infections – from escalating and demonstrated the importance of tracking, which allows, in addition to better understanding how the virus is spread, to determine the situations of greatest risk , establish who must be prioritized to submit tests, often scarce at the beginning of an epidemic.
Lee’s department was then prepared for what came – just days before SARS-Cov-2 was first sequenced on December 31, 2019, the staff conducted a simulation exercise based on a “disease X” caused precisely by a coronavirus – and continues to work to be so when the next highly pathogenic virus arrives.
“There are two reasons to think that there will be more pandemics. On the one hand, contact with wild animals, especially in Africa and other regions, is increasing and therefore the jump of viruses to humans is also increasing. On the other hand, the world is increasingly interconnected and that helps spread diseases very quickly”, explains Lee.
Every researcher in South Korea is required to complete a two-year course in which they study epidemiological theory, write academic articles and dissertations, and conduct fieldwork, of which interviews are key.
“Some infected get angry when they receive the same questions over and over again, first from doctors and then from researchers. That is why it is essential to establish a friendly relationship. It is important to explain why you are there, ask the patient how they are, remind them that the information obtained is confidential…”, says Park Yong-jin, former director of epidemiological research at the KDCA.
It is also important to “remember that this is done to protect others, that this is not a system of surveillance or punishment for those who have been infected,” Park explains before a workshop for the media to see what these interviews are like.
The journalists must interrogate an infected person -played by an epidemiological research student- to find out how and who he could have infected – “with a new coronavirus found in March 2027”, according to the script- but they run into the interviewee’s anger and in 15 minutes they barely get any information.
In a real case, such an interview would be done in a PPE suit, so the complicated process of wearing one is also taught.
With the protection on the journalists, an agent is spread over their suits whose remains are detected by the black light.
They all strictly follow the protocol to take it off and avoid being contaminated, but no one succeeds; the ultraviolet lamp reveals traces of the supposed virus in hair, clothing or even shoelaces…
The entry This is how they prepare in South Korea for a possible next super-contagious virus was first published in EFE Noticias.