All 2,480 Tested Negative at High-Risk Facilities Including Seongbuk-gu Nursing Hospitals

All 2,500+ Workers at 50 High-Risk Group Facilities Tested Negative in October COVID-19 Screening... Quiet Transmission Preemptively Blocked

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Jong-il] Seongbuk-gu (Mayor Lee Seung-ro) announced that all 2,480 people tested negative in a proactive COVID-19 screening conducted on workers at 50 high-risk facilities, including elderly care facilities and mental health promotion centers, where the risk of cluster infections is high, as well as users of day care centers. This comes amid sporadic COVID-19 cases recently occurring mainly in group facilities such as nursing hospitals and nursing homes.

The proactive screening was conducted from October 6 to 29, targeting 1,311 people at 7 nursing hospitals, 451 people at 19 nursing homes, 657 people at 20 day care centers, 50 people at 1 psychiatric medical institution, and 11 people at 3 psychiatric rehabilitation facilities.

To minimize face-to-face contact and prevent work disruptions among facility workers caring for the elderly and mentally or physically vulnerable individuals, the testing methods varied by facility.

For elderly welfare facilities such as nursing homes and day care centers, the public health center visited the facilities directly to conduct the tests. At nursing hospitals and psychiatric medical institutions with dedicated medical staff, the medical personnel within each facility collected specimens from the subjects and sent them to the public health center for testing. Workers at psychiatric rehabilitation facilities visited the public health center directly to receive COVID-19 tests.

Lee Seung-ro, Mayor of Seongbuk-gu, expressed gratitude that not a single COVID-19 case was detected in high-risk facilities such as nursing hospitals and nursing homes, stating, "Seongbuk-gu is recovering to a ‘COVID-19 clean area’ status with no local infection cases prior to the spread from Sarang Jeil Church." He urged that the safety of residents remain the top priority, emphasizing strict adherence to facility quarantine rules and the utmost efforts to prevent and contain infectious diseases such as COVID-19.

He also said, "As sporadic local infections continue to occur, we ask residents to refrain from unnecessary outings, gatherings, and use of multi-use facilities, and to strictly follow personal hygiene rules such as wearing masks, hand washing, and social distancing."

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