Alarm as Seoul Subway Staff Catch Coronavirus

Published on 2020/06/21 | Source

A worker disinfects Seoul City Hall subway station in the capital on Wednesday. /Yonhap

Three elderly safety staff on a construction site in Seoul City Hall subway station tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday.

They are in their 70s or 80s and live in the satellite towns of Bucheon, Anyang and Seongnam in Gyeonggi Province. Their job was to stop passengers from trespassing on the building sites.

The small group infection could have a potentially disastrous impact as the station is frequented by 50,000 passengers per day, and major government organizations and headquarters of big corporations are nearby.

As of midnight Wednesday, 906 out of 1,145 currently hospitalized coronavirus patients across the country were in the Seoul metropolitan area, which has seen several group infections recently.

Now they seem to be spreading further outwards, with 15 confirmed cases in Daejeon in central Korea in the last two days.

Jung Eun-Kyeong, the head of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday, "Regardless of the weather, COVID-19 will linger around the world. The virus can spread again anywhere at any time in closed and crowded environments".