Thursday - February 20, 2020

another case of the sniffles

South Korean city of Daegu goes into total lockdown as cult church super spreader passes WuFlu around, nearly doubling number of cases in South Korea in one day. 60 more probably in a couple days.

The South Korean city of Daegu was facing an “unprecedented crisis” after coronavirus infections that centred on a controversial “cult” church surged to 38 cases, accounting for nearly half of the country’s total.

The city of 2.5 million people, which is two hours south of the capital Seoul, was turned into a ghost town after health officials said the bulk of country’s 31 new cases announced on Thursday were linked to a branch of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus.

“We are in an unprecedented crisis,” Daegu’s mayor, Kwon Young-jin, told reporters.

He ordered the shutdown of all kindergartens and public libraries, according to the news agency Yonhap. Schools in the city were considering postponing the beginning of the spring term scheduled for early March.

Shopping malls and movie theatres were empty and the usually busy city centre streets were quiet. A concert featuring BTS and other K-pop stars that was set for Daegu Stadium on 8 March has been postponed.

The defence ministry banned troops stationed in Daegu from leaving their barracks and receiving guests. The US military imposed similar restrictions on its army base in the city, which houses thousands of troops, family members and civilian employees, curbing travel and closing schools and child care centres.

In what the Korean centre for disease control called a “super spreader” event, almost half of the country’s total of 82 infections have been linked to a 61-year-old woman who worships at the Daegu church, an entity often accused of being a cult.

She first developed a fever on 10 February but reportedly twice refused to be tested for the coronavirus on the grounds that she had not recently travelled abroad. She attended at least four services before being diagnosed.

So far, 37 other members of the church have been confirmed as infected.

Shincheonji claims that its founder, Lee Man-hee, has donned the mantle of Jesus Christ and will take 144,000 people with him to Heaven, body and soul, on the Day of Judgement.

Daegu’s municipal government said there were 1,001 Shincheonji members in the city, all of whom had been asked to self-quarantine, with 90 of them currently showing symptoms.

“We are deeply sorry that because of one of our members, who thought of her condition as a cold because she had not travelled abroad, led to many in our church being infected and thereby caused concern to the local community,” it said in a statement.

They don’t have wet market bats for sale in South Korea do they? Not trying to be flippant, but if she hasn’t been abroad, then someone she’s been in recent contact with has. Or else there are other infected people just walking around. There has to be a vector somewhere.

In South Korea the stunning Oscar successes of local film “Parasite” had briefly knocked coronavirus off front pages.

But the outbreak was back with a vengeance. By late Thursday, 53 new cases of the virus were reported, more than doubling the country’s total to 104; on Wednesday the total had been just 51. The country also reported its first death from the virus, a 63-year-old who had been bed-ridden for 20 days.

The sudden spike in cases came largely in the southeastern city of Daegu, where 51 out of the day’s 53 new cases originated.

According to reports early in the day, of the cases in Daegu, 23 stemmed from one un-named woman, a worshipper at a church in the industrial city that lies some 150 miles (233 km) southeast of Seoul, with a population of 2.3 million.

Due to the number of people she allegedly infected, she has been labeled a “super carrier.”

The difference between 38 and 51 cases reported could be because the second news article is a few hours younger than the first. Daegu may be starting to go exponential. Mutation? More susceptible? We may never know.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/20/2020 at 03:43 PM   
Filed Under: • Health-Medicine •  
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