South Korea records 113 new COVID-19 cases, most from overseas

The figures released by South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Saturday brought the national caseload to 14,092, including 298 deaths.

PTI

July 25, 2020 / 09:01 AM IST

South Korea has reported 113 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 over the past 24 hours, its first daily jump over 100 in nearly four months. But the rise was predictable as health authorities had forecast a temporary spike driven by imported infections found among cargo ship crews and hundreds of South Korean construction workers airlifted out of virus-ravaged Iraq.

The figures released by South Korea's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Saturday brought the national caseload to 14,092, including 298 deaths.

The KCDC said 86 of the new cases were linked to international arrivals while the other 27 were local transmissions. It said the imported cases included 36 South Korean workers who returned from Iraq and 32 crew members of a Russia-flagged cargo ship docked in the southern port of Busan.

South Korean officials consider imported cases as less threatening than local transmissions as they mandate tests and enforce two-week quarantines on all overseas arrivals.

Kwon Jun-wook, director of South Korea's National Institute of Health, said during a briefing Friday afternoon that the newly reported cases the next morning would likely exceed 100 for the first time since April 1 and urged the public not to be overly alarmed by it.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

Show