In early May, a 29-year-old man visited several bars and nightclubs in the South Korean capital of Seoul and soon after tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. South Korean health authorities promptly launched an enormous contact-tracing effort, tested 83,000 people, and identified and isolated nearly 250 newly infected cases. Their swift action prevented this “superspreading” event from reigniting a much wider outbreak. As of early June, there has not been a major uptick in cases in South Korea—new infections remain under 50 per day—and the country is carefully but safely returning to a semblance of normalcy.
South Korea and the United States both confirmed their first COVID-19 cases on January 20. But the two countries’ outbreaks have since diverged radically. The United States continues to record roughly 20,000 new cases per day. Five months into the pandemic, the United States has achieved the largest case count and death toll (now well over 100,000 deaths) in the world. The crisis has brought large sectors of the economy to a standstill and forced 40 million workers to file for unemployment. The disease is moving rapidly into rural areas, ravaging meatpacking plants and long-term care facilities. Most U.S. states have nowhere near the testing and contact-tracing capacity exhibited by South Korea but are nevertheless relaxing their containment measures.
