Effective Handling of COVID-19 Pandemic: Experiences and Lessons from the Perspective of South Korea

ABSTRACT

The ongoing pandemic (i.e., novel corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19)) is a major crisis that humanity is facing across the globe. In response to COVID-19, every country has designed and enforced various mechanisms to control its spread, and save their citizens from this deadly disease. Besides the general containment strategies, the use of technology and person-specific data collection and processing also vary from country to country. In this brief case report, we describe the measures that South Korea (SK) has adopted in order to curb the spread of COVID-19, and the success of SK in keeping the cases at a manageable level since the start of this pandemic until present via extensive use of technology. Specifically, we describe the data collected to control this pandemic, technical framework in place to ensure co-ordination with different authorities, containment strategies, and major breakthrough SK achieved when sporadic clusters emerged throughout the nation. With this brief overview, we aim to update the research community about the unprecedented efforts SK made, utilizing previous pandemic experiences, and the successful results they have obtained so far amid this pandemic, leveraging technology.