HK AND MACAO DESIGNATED AS CONTAMINATED AREAS

[Anchor Lead]

Starting Wednesday, Korea is also designating Hong Kong and Macao as contaminated areas for the coronavirus, and will accordingly step up health screenings. People's travel history for areas outside mainland China will also be alerted to hospitals and pharmacies.

[Pkg]

Hong Kong and Macao have also been designated as contaminated areas for the novel coronavirus. The decision was made as both are geographically close to Guangdong. In China, Hubei Province has the most confirmed cases and Guangdong Province is the second most infected area. As of February 11th, Hong Kong reported 49 infections so far including one death from the disease while Macao has ten confirmed cases. Starting Wednesday, Seoul will conduct the same level of screenings implemented for mainland China on travellers from these two territories as well. They will go through temperature checks and a health condition questionnaire upon arrival. Authorities are also reviewing the designation for Singapore as well. Also, Korea began providing one's travel history involving countries like Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam to hospitals and pharmacies. Travel records to Japan will be sent out from Thursday and to Taiwan and Malaysia starting next Monday as well. As of Tuesday, South Korea has confirmed one more infection. The 28th patient is a 30 year old Chinese female, an acquaintance of a male Korean citizen who is the nation's 3rd confirmed patient. So far the tally shows 19 out of the 28 patients to date have traveled abroad and 14 of them visited China. The other nine who haven't traveled abroad were infected domestically through secondary or tertiary contagion. Those in their 50s account for the most at 8 patients out of the 28. 22 are South Korean and six Chinese.