Detection vital

At a news conference last week, South Korean Health Minister Park Neung-hoo said it is very important to detect cases at an early stage. Once this highly contagious virus spreads, it does so extremely quickly and over very wide areas. "Thus, raising the testing capability is very important, because in this way, you can detect someone who's carrying the virus, then you can contain it," he said.

Park said the authorities have also arranged facilities for patients showing mild symptoms, adding that only about 10 percent of those with the virus had required hospitalization.

Dong Xiangrong, a researcher at the National Institute of International Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said: "South Korea is well prepared. If there hadn't been any "special events", such as gatherings of the Shincheonji religious group, the country could have responded to the outbreak calmly and better."

South Korea's "patient zero" was discovered on Jan 19, when a Chinese woman who arrived at Incheon Airport in Seoul with fever symptoms was diagnosed with the virus. The next day, the country raised its alert level for the outbreak to "attention-needed".

Nearly one month after the first case was detected, the number of infections in the country remained very low, Dong said. "The situation did not become really serious until mid-February, starting with Patient 31."

Dong was referring to a 61-year-old South Korean woman, a devout follower of the Shincheonji group.

On Feb 6, after a traffic accident, the woman sought treatment at a clinic, during which she developed a fever. The doctor asked her to go to a hospital to test for the virus, but she initially refused. However, on Feb 18, the woman was confirmed as the 31st case of novel coronavirus pneumonia infection in South Korea.

Media reports said that from Feb 6 to 18, the woman had taken part in many rallies staged by the Shincheonji group, which bans face masks and whose members pray in close proximity. Its leader, Lee Manhee, who has been accused of deliberately withholding information about the group's membership, may face murder charges.

After the woman was diagnosed, the number of infections in South Korea began to rise rapidly, with the country being the most severely affected outside of China.

The KCDC said in a statement that about 75 percent of all cases detected since the woman tested positive had been in the southeastern city of Daegu, where the Shinchonji group is located, and 90 percent of all cases in the country were directly or indirectly linked to the group.

Dong said that although South Korea established an early warning system for the virus and had invested heavily in testing, the outbreak among the religious group had caught the government off guard.