Shortcomings of the Korean Government's Policies to Combat the COVID-19 Pandemic and Suggestions for Improvement

Abstract

When coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was reported in China in December 2019, a lot of Korean medical specialists insisted on banning people from China from entering Korea. However, the Korean government focused on suppressing the domestic spread of COVID-19 by locating patients through quarantine and examination at airports even after the first imported case and the sequentially transmitted cases were recognized in Korea.1,2 Song et al.3 mentioned that the screening of COVID-19 patients at airports was not enough and that it was inadequate to prevent the inflow of the virus at airports in the early days of the epidemic. If the inflow passengers were banned, it could have helped to reduce the initial infection of patients with COVID-19 in the months to come.