Seoul surge appears to spread around South Korea

SEOUL, South Korea: South Korea added its most new virus cases in months on Friday, driven by a surge around the capital that appears to be spreading nationwide.

The 324 new infections was its highest single day total since early March and the eighth consecutive triple-digit daily increase.

Most of the people recently infected live in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan region, where health workers are scrambling to track transmissions from various sources, including churches, restaurants, schools and workers.

But the new infections reported Friday were from practically all of South Korea's major cities, including Busan, Gwangju, Daejeon, Sejong and Daegu, the southeastern city that was the epicenter of a massive outbreak in late February and March.

The newest figures reported by South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brought the nation's caseload to 16,670, including 309 deaths.

Health authorities had managed to contain the virus in the Daegu region by April, ramping up tests and extensively using cellphone location data, credit-card records and security camera footage to trace and isolate contacts, which allowed the country to weather the outbreak without placing meaningful restrictions on its economy.

Another factor was that the narrowness of the Daegu outbreak effectively aided its containment - most were tied to a single church congregation of thousands of members.

It’s unclear whether South Korea’s previous formula of success would be as effective since the Seoul region has many more people and new clusters are occurring in varied places as people increasingly venture out in public.

Churches had been a major course of new cases in the Seoul area before authorities shut them this week while raising social distancing restrictions, something they had resisted for months out of economic concerns. Nightclubs, karaoke, buffet restaurants and computer gaming cafes are also closed while spectators have been prohibited again from baseball and soccer games.

Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip said 739 infections confirmed as of Friday were linked to members of a northern Seoul church led by a vocal critic of the country’s president. Sarang Jeil Church pastor Jun Kwang-hun was hospitalized with COVID-19 on Monday after participating in an anti-government protest last week where he shared a microphone on stage with other activists.

Health workers have used location data provided by cellphone carriers to identify some 15,000 people who spent more than 30 minutes on the streets where the protests took place and are alerting them to get tested, Kim said. At least 60 infections have been linked to the protests.