New framework to assess tracing and testing based on South Korea's response to COVID-19

South Korea's remarkable success in controlling the spread of COVID-19 during the pre-Omicron period was based on extensive contact tracing and large-scale testing. Here we suggest a general criterion for tracing and testing based on South Korea's experience, and propose a new framework to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBMC infectious diseases Vol. 24; no. 1; p. 469
Main Authors Kim, Junhyoung, Jo, Suyoung, Cho, Sung-Il
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England BioMed Central Ltd 03.05.2024
BioMed Central
BMC
Subjects
Analysis
Asymptomatic
Call centers
Citation management software
Contact
Contact tracing
Contact Tracing - methods
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 - diagnosis
COVID-19 - epidemiology
COVID-19 - prevention & control
COVID-19 - transmission
COVID-19 Testing - methods
Diagnosis
Disease control
Disease transmission
Epidemics
Epidemiology
Humans
Infections
Investigations
Medical research
Medicine, Experimental
Preempting
Quarantine
Republic of Korea - epidemiology
SARS-CoV-2 - isolation & purification
Social distancing
South Korea
Testing
Workers
Republic of Korea
South Korea
United States > US
Argentina
COVID-19
Contact tracing
Testing
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Summary:South Korea's remarkable success in controlling the spread of COVID-19 during the pre-Omicron period was based on extensive contact tracing and large-scale testing. Here we suggest a general criterion for tracing and testing based on South Korea's experience, and propose a new framework to assess tracing and testing. We reviewed papers on South Korea's response to COVID-19 to capture its concept of tracing and testing. South Korea expanded its testing capabilities to enable group tracing combined with preemptive testing, and to conduct open testing. According to our proposed model, COVID-19 cases are classified into 4 types: confirmed in quarantine, source known, source unknown, and unidentified. The proportion of the first two case types among confirmed cases is defined as "traced proportion", and used as the indicator of tracing and testing effectiveness. In conclusion, South Korea successfully suppressed COVID-19 transmission by maintaining a high traced proportion (> 60%) using group tracing in conjunction with preemptive testing as a complementary strategy to traditional contact tracing.
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ISSN:1471-2334
1471-2334
DOI:10.1186/s12879-024-09363-4