Increasing Cases of Jeju Visits Without Quarantine After COVID-19 Testing Raise 'Concerns'

Arriving through the fever screening checkpoint at Jeju Airport. Photo by Park Changwon

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters (Jeju) Reporter Park Chang-won] As the target for COVID-19 diagnostic testing expands in the Seoul metropolitan area due to the spread of infections, many people are traveling to Jeju without quarantine after testing, raising concerns among Jeju's quarantine authorities.

According to Jeju Province on the 27th, it has been confirmed that the number of people who were tested at screening clinics in the metropolitan area and then entered Jeju and were diagnosed positive is increasing.

When a person wishes to be tested at a screening clinic in Seoul and undergoes testing, they are required to quarantine and wait until the diagnostic test results are out. However, since there is no legal provision for punishment if they leave, cases have occurred where individuals enter Jeju after specimen collection without waiting.

In the past week, it was confirmed that a total of four confirmed cases from other regions entered Jeju: one on the 24th, one on the 25th, and two on the 26th. All of them are currently waiting for hospitalization due to lack of assigned beds.

Jeju Province prioritizes hospital bed allocation for confirmed cases within the province and plans to assign lower priority to those who tested elsewhere and entered Jeju without waiting and were later confirmed positive.

Additionally, they plan to officially propose to the government revisions to guidelines such as mandatory waiting after anonymous testing.

Governor Won Hee-ryong presided over the daily COVID-19 response meeting at Halla Hall on the 4th floor of Jeju Provincial Office at 8 a.m. on the 27th and instructed to "carefully determine whether there are cases where movement should be restricted or prohibited."

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