Gyeonggi-do Implements Preventive Cohort Isolation at 1,824 Facilities for Infection-Vulnerable Groups

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] Gyeonggi Province will implement 'preventive cohort isolation' for medical and residential facilities housing vulnerable groups to infectious diseases, such as the elderly and disabled.

Cohort isolation generally refers to the measure of completely sealing off an institution where an infection has occurred to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. Contrary to this, the province has introduced a preventive measure to isolate vulnerable facilities without infections for a certain period to protect them from external infection inflow.

On the 1st, the province announced that it will carry out 'preventive cohort isolation' for two weeks at 1,824 locations, including elderly nursing facilities, elderly care homes, residential facilities for the disabled, elderly nursing hospitals, mental care facilities, and mental care institutions.

This measure by the province is based on the judgment that proactive protection is necessary for residential and medical facilities where the elderly, who are at high risk of group infections, live.

Facilities subject to preventive cohort isolation will have both essential workers providing services to residents and the residents themselves live isolated from the outside.

Visits by visitors, including residents' families, are completely prohibited, and any external items brought in must be disinfected.

The province plans to compensate facilities implementing 'preventive cohort isolation' for losses incurred due to isolation, such as overtime pay for workers, meal and snack expenses.

Additionally, the province will continuously monitor compliance at each facility and encourage those not participating to enter cohorting. If necessary, the cohorting period will be extended and additional target facilities will be added.

Meanwhile, facilities unable to immediately implement preventive cohort isolation are requested, as a temporary measure before cohort isolation, to completely ban external visits under the responsibility of the facility head and to have workers self-isolate outside working hours.

Lee Jae-myung, Governor of Gyeonggi Province, explained, "We have implemented preventive cohort isolation based on the principle that overreaction is better than delayed response in infectious diseases," adding, "It is painful to ask people to endure the difficult situation of isolation, but I hope we can encourage and support each other and overcome this crisis together."

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