Gwangju Mayor Lee Yong-seop: "Protect Citizens' Safety with Prompt and Accurate Testing"

Visiting the Gwangju Health and Environment Research Institute, a New Coronavirus Testing Facility

On the morning of the 10th, Lee Yong-seop, Mayor of Gwangju Metropolitan City, visited the Gwangju Health and Environment Research Institute in Seo-gu, a diagnostic institution for the novel coronavirus infection, to encourage the researchers and staff and conduct an on-site inspection of the virus testing process. Photo by Gwangju Metropolitan City

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] On the 10th, Lee Yong-seop, Mayor of Gwangju Metropolitan City, visited the Gwangju Health and Environment Research Institute, a diagnostic institution for the novel coronavirus infection, to inspect the testing process on-site and encourage the personnel maintaining the 24-hour emergency system.

On that day, Mayor Lee received reports from Seo Gye-won, Director of the Gwangju Health and Environment Research Institute, and related personnel on the response system in case of suspected novel coronavirus infection patients, the specimen preprocessing process conducted immediately, and the testing procedures including coronavirus gene extraction and amplification.

The Health and Environment Research Institute currently has 26 field response personnel divided into four teams, who have given up holidays to establish a 24-hour continuous emergency laboratory testing system and are conducting infection disease tests.

In particular, they are responding to ensure that infection test results are produced within six hours so that follow-up measures can be taken promptly.

Since establishing the novel coronavirus infection laboratory testing system on the 22nd of last month, a total of 254 tests have been conducted so far, with two positive cases confirmed.

After receiving the report, Mayor Lee visited the biosafety sealed laboratory control room to check the progress of the testing process and safety rules.

He especially called the staff conducting tests in the Biosafety Level 3 sealed laboratory (BL-3, Biosafety Laboratory-3) for novel coronavirus infection testing to encourage them and urged them to pay attention to safety.

Seo Gye-won, Director of the Health and Environment Research Institute, reported, “Since the first confirmed case of novel coronavirus infection occurred in Korea on the 20th of last month, we immediately established a laboratory testing system capable of testing more than 150 people per day. We will do our best in testing for the safety of citizens.”

Mayor Lee Yong-seop said, “I am grateful to all of you who silently serve and dedicate yourselves in your positions. As the safety and happiness of citizens are being protected, I hope you work with a sense of mission. While it is important to conduct tests quickly and accurately for the safety of citizens, the safety of the testers is also important, so please strictly follow the hygiene management and testing system according to the manual.”

Meanwhile, to block the spread of the novel coronavirus infection, Mayor Lee visited the National Designated Inpatient Treatment Beds at Chosun University and the Dong-gu Health Center screening clinic on the 3rd, and the Namgwangju Station of the urban railway on the 5th to inspect countermeasures directly on site.

On the 6th, he visited the Gwangju Fire Academy dormitory, where low-risk contacts of confirmed patients were quarantined, to review quarantine measures and patient conditions, and on the 7th, he volunteered to provide free meals for citizens quarantined at the same location.

On the 9th, he visited the 21st Century Hospital to listen to the condition of quarantined citizens, the deployment status of medical staff, patient inconveniences, and hospital difficulties.

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