[Initial Report] The Complaints of a Nursing Hospital Cook Amid 'Scientific Quarantine' Breach

A woman in her 60s working as a cook at a local nursing hospital sent an email. It was a plea expressing her frustration over unfair treatment amid a COVID-19 cluster infection in the hospital, where the infection route was unknown.

Since the Prime Minister presides over the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters (CDSCH) meetings for COVID-19, she seemed to think that reporting to a reporter covering the Prime Minister’s Office might improve her situation somewhat. The woman complained that the nursing hospital, being a vulnerable facility for infections, requires proactive COVID-19 testing twice a week, which is already difficult, yet confirmed patients were being neglected.

When she was advised to report to the Ministry of Employment and Labor’s anonymous reporting center, she said she was too afraid to do so because she might lose the job she had barely secured at her advanced age. Her dissatisfaction began when the hospital notified her that the quarantine period would be forcibly counted as annual leave. As a cook, her work schedule changes every month, often working three consecutive days including weekends and then taking a day off, so days off are very important. If the hospital had shown a little consideration, paid leave could have been arranged. The government also actively recommends paid leave for COVID-19 confirmed cases.

However, since the government cannot enforce this, conflicts frequently arise. The woman said that on the third day, when she was reluctantly using her annual leave despite having no symptoms, she received a call from the government side telling her to come to work because they were conducting an inspection.

In effect, she violated the guidelines by returning to work during the quarantine period. This is likely not an isolated case at this nursing hospital. Article 41-2 of the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act stipulates that employers may provide paid leave to workers hospitalized or quarantined due to COVID-19, and must provide paid leave if costs are supported by the state. However, the controversy over forced use of annual leave has been heated from the early days of COVID-19 until now.

The Yoon Seok-yeol administration has disparaged the previous administration’s quarantine measures as “political quarantine” and claimed to rely on “scientific quarantine” based on data and experts, but the prevailing opinion is that its substance is vague. Nursing hospitals, representative vulnerable infection facilities, were completely breached under scientific quarantine.

According to the CDSCH, the number of infections in nursing hospitals and nursing facilities surged by 71.8%, from 165 to 426, between the fourth week of July and the third week of August. Therefore, the government’s measure proposed at the CDSCH meeting, after consulting experts, was to ban in-person visits during the Chuseok holiday period. It is the same measure as during “political quarantine.” They also said they would conduct on-site drills for each stage of patient occurrence. The nursing hospital quarantine network has collapsed, so it is unclear what meaning this holds.

Speaking of which, experts say the COVID-19 antibody positivity rate survey was conducted very late and lacks effectiveness. As of the 25th, South Korea’s cumulative COVID-19 confirmed cases stand at 22,701,921. Nearly half of the population has already been infected, so there is hope that the antibody test data, funded by taxpayers, will be used scientifically for quarantine. It is also reasonable to point out that having antibodies does not mean they are retained indefinitely, and the amount retained varies by individual.

The antibody positivity rate survey is suitable for resolving questions about the scale of natural infections and undiagnosed infections, but it seems distant from quarantine measures aimed at infection prevention. Since the Yoon administration, the only change in COVID-19 quarantine policy has been the abolition of social distancing. Whenever an article about the CDSCH is written, sarcastic comments like “not scientific quarantine but scientific neglect” inevitably appear. The government should pay careful attention not only to showy quarantine measures but also to managing citizens who suffer doubly or triply in blind spots.

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