Korea, the United States, and 12 Other Countries Hold Weekly Meetings on COVID-19

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the global stock markets plummeted, causing the KOSPI index to start the day with a sharp decline of over 8% on the 13th, breaking below the 1690 level during trading. On this day, dealers are busy working in the dealing room of Hana Bank in Euljiro, Seoul. Photo by Moon Honam munonam@

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Junho] Following the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring COVID-19 a pandemic yesterday, South Korea, the United States, and 9 other countries will jointly respond to COVID-19.

On the 13th, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT, Minister Choi Ki-young held a teleconference with science and technology ministers and advisors from 11 countries, including Kelvin Droegemeier, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to discuss scientific and technological responses to COVID-19.

The countries participating in this meeting were the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.

The representatives from each country discussed guaranteeing the use of works such as COVID-19 related data and research results, and ways to strengthen the role of public data repositories.

First, the countries discussed the need to make the PubMed Central (PMC), an electronic library operated by the National Library of Medicine under the U.S. National Institutes of Health, publicly accessible. This library holds more than 5 million research papers and academic materials.

Additionally, the countries agreed on the necessity of artificial intelligence programs to extract useful information from the papers and materials published there. They also believed that the analysis results of such programs should be made public. They unanimously agreed on the importance of activating databases that collect and disclose related data, such as the International Influenza Data Sharing Initiative.

The International Influenza Data Sharing Initiative is a database operated by WHO for influenza epidemic surveillance. Currently, more than 300 COVID-19 virus genome data are publicly available.

Each country agreed to share their COVID-19 status weekly and hold meetings accordingly.

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