Gov’t tracks down Shincheonji adherents and many feel ill
They were told to self-quarantine in their homes to await testing, said Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip.
Health officials said they were going down a list of 194,781 Shincheonji worshippers in Korea outside Daegu, and that 114,068 (58.6 percent) had been contacted by Thursday midnight, of which 1,638 (1.4 percent) answered they felt they were coming down with symptoms of the virus.
The list of 194,781 Shincheonji worshippers in Korea did not include some 9,300 followers in Daegu — where a large Shincheonji church building has become a focus of the epidemiological investigation — because Daegu officials obtained that list earlier and have been going down the directory separately.
From Daegu’s 9,300 Shincheonji followers, about 1,300 are known to have reported symptoms, and they are undergoing tests as well.
Any new positive test results for the Shincheonji worshippers will be added to the nation’s total infections toll over the weekend, Kim said, likely leading to more steep hikes tomorrow and the day after.
On Friday morning, 256 more infections were counted by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), 182 in Daegu, 49 in the surrounding province of North Gyeongsang in the southeastern part of the country, and six in Seoul. That brings Korea’s total number of cases to 2,022.
The death toll stood at 13, unchanged from Thursday.
The last coronavirus patient in Korea to have died was a 74-year-old Shincheonji worshipper in Daegu, who was waiting for an empty hospital bed at his home when his symptoms worsened Thursday morning. He died on his way to the hospital that day.
BY LEE SUNG-EUN [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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