TY - JOUR AU - Kim, Hae-Young AU - Oh, In-Hwan AU - Lee, Jacob AU - Seon, Jeong-Yeon AU - Jeon, Woo-Hwi AU - Park, Jae Seok AU - Nam, Sung-Il AU - Thakkar, Niket AU - Selvaraj, Prashanth AU - McGillen, Jessica AU - Klein, Daniel AU - Braithwaite, Scott AU - Bershteyn, Anna AU - Lee, Seung Heon T1 - Policy Review and Modeling Analysis of Mitigation Measures for Coronavirus Disease Epidemic Control, Health System, and Disease Burden, South Korea T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2021 VL - 27 IS - 11 SP - 2753 SN - 1080-6059 AB - We reviewed the timeline of key policies for control of the coronavirus disease epidemic and determined their impact on the epidemic and hospital burden in South Korea. Using a discrete stochastic transmission model, we estimated that multilevel policies, including extensive testing, contact tracing, and quarantine, reduced contact rates by 90% and rapidly decreased the epidemic in Daegu and nationwide during February‒March 2020. Absence of these prompt responses could have resulted in a >10-fold increase in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths by May 15, 2020, relative to the status quo. The model suggests that reallocation of persons who have mild or asymptomatic cases to community treatment centers helped avoid overwhelming hospital capacity and enabled healthcare workers to provide care for more severely and critically ill patients in hospital beds and negative-pressure intensive care units. As small outbreaks continue to occur, contact tracing and maintenance of hospital capacity are needed. KW - coronavirus disease KW - COVID-19 KW - severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 KW - SARS-CoV-2 KW - coronaviruses KW - viruses KW - respiratory infections KW - epidemic model KW - infection control KW - mathematical modelling KW - zoonoses KW - South Korea DO - 10.3201/eid2711.203779 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/11/20-3779_article ER - End of Reference