FOREIGN MEDIA ON S. KOREA'S COVID-19 OUTBREAK

[Anchor Lead]

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has skyrocketed in Korea in the past week. But the foreign media have been attributing such a spike in confirmed cases to Korean healthcare providers' excellent diagnostic capabilities.

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​More than 900 confirmed COVID-19 cases have been reported in Korea within a week. TIME magazine reported that such a surge can be attributed to Korean society's openness and transparency. In the interview, Visiting Scholar Andray Abrahamian of George Mason University said, "South Korea's number seems high at least in part because the country has advanced diagnostic capability, a free press and a democratically accountable system." Other experts shared his analysis that Korea finds a great number of patients using superior diagnostic capability and releases the information right away. So far, the country has tested about 40,000 COVID-19 cases. David Lim, a reporter for Politico, who witnessed this phenomenon twitted, "Impressive lab capacity that the U.S. does not appear to have in place yet." Former Commissioner of U.S. FDA Scott Gottlieb also reported, "Very detailed #covid19 reporting from South Korean health officials ; demonstrating a significant diagnostic capability." He compared Korea's capacity with that of Japan. He said that "Japan isn't testing as much and the country may be a big hot spot." In fact, Japan has so far tested only about 1,700 people, just a quarter of the cases tested in a single day in Korea.

[Soundbite] SHINZO ABE(JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER) : "We have sporadic cases of uncertain spread routes and small groups of patients confined to certain areas."

Meanwhile, a reporter with Reuters' Chinese office pointed out that despite Korea's significant diagnostic capability, the results can sometimes be inaccurate.