At Night, Airline Staff Conduct Quarantine... National Assembly Budget Cuts Cause 'Severe Shortage of Quarantine Personnel'

On the morning of the 28th, at the arrival hall of Terminal 1, Incheon International Airport, people arriving from Shanghai, China, are being guided to submit health status questionnaires at the quarantine station. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency designated the entire region of China as a quarantine target contaminated area in relation to the novel coronavirus and made quarantine and submission of health status questionnaires mandatory for all arrivals. / Yeongjongdo - Photo by Kim Hyunmin kimhyun81@

[Asia Economy Reporters Yoo In-ho and Choi Dae-yeol] Due to the surge in quarantine demand at Incheon International Airport caused by the novel coronavirus infection (Wuhan pneumonia), it has been reported that private airline staff are performing quarantine duties during late afternoon, late-night, and early morning hours. Quarantine is considered the frontline in preventing the influx of infectious diseases, but this situation arose because the number of quarantine personnel is not at an adequate level.

According to industry sources on the 30th, Korean Air dispatched some employees to the transfer area of Terminal 2 at Incheon Airport. They conduct fever checks on transfer passengers. Although there are quarantine staff, fever checks in the Terminal 2 transfer area are only conducted from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., so Korean Air employees took over the duties until the quarantine staff arrived the next day. Unlike Terminal 1, Terminal 2 allows transfer passengers to bypass the quarantine checkpoint and proceed directly to the transfer area, which has been a point of concern since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

Concerns about insufficient quarantine personnel have existed since the past. During the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in 2015, the shortage of quarantine staff was criticized for exacerbating the problem, leading to an increase in personnel. However, with the rise in overseas travelers and the outbreak of infectious diseases in neighboring countries like this time, the number of individuals requiring quarantine increases explosively. Since the 28th, about 20,000 people enter Korea daily from China, which has been designated as a contaminated country. Each entrant from contaminated areas must have their temperature checked and respiratory symptoms examined individually.

According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), the estimated appropriate number of personnel needed for regular quarantine and targeted quarantine management for contaminated areas like this case is about 533. Including personnel required for shift work, responding to individuals with symptoms, and special duties such as biological terrorism standby, the KDCA estimates a total of 739 quarantine staff are necessary.

However, as of last year, the National Quarantine Station had 453 personnel. This is about 80 fewer than the appropriate number and nearly 300 fewer than the total required personnel. The current government requested budget increases to expand quarantine personnel, but the National Assembly opposed citing financial burdens, cutting the budget for increasing quarantine staff by 50 over the past three years.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.