COVID-19 TESTS AT SCHOOLS

[Anchor Lead]

More than 2,000 students and teachers have tested positive for the coronavirus just one and a half months after the start of the new semester. In an urgent response to help curb this spike, education authorities have decided to preemptively conduct COVID-19 tests on teachers and students in Seoul.

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A high school in Seoul. Teachers and students check their health conditions via the self-diagnosis app before leaving home every morning. They have temperatures measured before entering the classroom. School staff disinfect stair railings and other shared facilities every hour.

[Soundbite] Kim Mi-jin(Seoul Visual Media High School) : "At school, we stay in close contact with other people longer than we do at home. We change classrooms to take lessons. So it is necessary to manage potential patients in initial stages before they come to school."

Despite these efforts, more than 2,000 teachers and students have tested positive for the coronavirus since the start of the new semester in early March. According to the Education Ministry's analysis of their transmission routes, 56 percent of them got infected from their family members and 19 percent through local communities. Education authorities announced plans to toughen antivirus rules on schools and cram schools across the nation to protect them from community-acquired infections. As part of the measures, preemptive COVID-19 testing will be introduced to all schools in Seoul on a trial basis starting early next month. Teachers and students can take polymerase chain reaction tests at schools when they want, even if they are not subject to epidemiological investigations. Coronavirus tests will be conducted more quickly and easily at schools located within a radius of a kilometer from the schools that have reported infections. For on-the-spot tests, three-member testing teams consisting of nurses and medical technologists will make circuit visits to schools.

[Soundbite] Yoo Eun-hae(Minister of Education) : "The move is aimed at giving teachers and students easier access to COVID-19 testing while detecting infected patients early and help them block transmissions."

Education authorities will review expanding the preemptive testing nationwide, based on the results of the pilot operation in Seoul. In order to prevent transmissions in advance, they will operate an intensive quarantine period at schools and private test-prep academies for three weeks. But the Education Ministry flatly opposed the city government's proposal to introduce COVID-19 self-test kits to schools, saying their effectiveness has not yet been proven.