Today (20th) is the first day for Korean primary and secondary school students to return to school. Senior high school students and schools with less than 60 students are allowed to resume classes first. However, affected by the concentrated transmission of Seoul Itaewon nightclubs and other sporadic cases, many schools failed to resume classes that day.
In Incheon area, two senior high school students were diagnosed with COVID-19 on the same day. The Incheon Municipal Education Department then required 66 schools in the area under its jurisdiction to suspend classes urgently and students went home to receive online teaching. It is understood that both confirmed students are related to the infection case of a cram school teacher in Incheon. The teacher had previously gone to Itaewon nightclub. After the outbreak of the concentrated transmission incident, the teacher concealed personal information, causing his students to be infected. His students once went to a local singing room, which made this singing room and its building become a "hot zone" where the epidemic in Incheon spread. The cases associated with this teacher have increased to 27, almost one-fifth of the total number of infections in Incheon.
is in Gyeonggi-do Ancheng City. Due to a confirmed patient the day before yesterday, his course of action has not yet been clarified. For safety reasons, the local education department also suspended the return plan for the 20th.
In addition to the schools that failed to resume classes as scheduled for some reason, many schools that have resumed classes have also reported many cases of students having suspected symptoms. For example, in North Gyeongsang Province, a total of 59 students from 32 schools were sent home due to symptoms such as fever; another 84 students failed to return to school when they had symptoms of fever or cough during self-diagnosis; and in , Cheongju City, North Chungcheong Province, 5 students were also sent to the hospital for suspected symptoms that day.
Although students were diagnosed with infection on the first day of resumption of classes, the South Korean government said on the 20th that it will not immediately return to the state of strictly observing social distance. According to the South Korean health department's notice on the 20th, the country has 32 new confirmed cases of new coronary pneumonia from 0:00 on the 19th to 0:00 on the 20th, of which 24 are local cases and 8 are inflows from abroad, with the cumulative number of confirmed cases rising to 11,110. As of 12 noon that day, the number of confirmed cases of new coronavirus pneumonia related to the Itaewon nightclub in Seoul increased to 196, 9 new cases from the previous day. (Central Channel reporter Li Dajie)
