Lee Jae-myung: "Preemptive Mass Testing Needed. Grant Local Governments Discretionary Authority"

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Park No-hun] Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung recommended to President Moon Jae-in that testing subjects and methods be expanded further to prevent COVID-19 spread, and requested that standards be relaxed and discretionary authority be granted so that local governments can also conduct emergency screening tests.

At a COVID-19 Seoul Metropolitan Area quarantine situation review meeting chaired by President Moon Jae-in on the 9th, Governor Lee Jae-myung stated, "Cases with unknown transmission routes are concealed across a very broad scope, making it difficult to track (COVID-19 transmission sources) with just people coming to screening clinics as they are now. We are planning to introduce a method of proactively and intensively conducting mass testing by selecting specific regions or specific sectors."

Governor Lee went on to say, "Currently the system restricts rapid antigen testing usage to emergency patients and emergency rooms, so we would like the guidelines to be relaxed. Secondly, we are conducting rapid antigen testing on a pilot basis, and we hope you would allow local governments to have discretion to judge and conduct testing more broadly."

He added, "Due to concerns about reduced accuracy, (implementation) has been delayed considerably, but I believe large-scale random testing is necessary even at this point."

Current guidelines limit the use of diagnostic products that received emergency use approval for emergency screening testing to patients in critical condition in emergency rooms and those requiring emergency surgery within six hours.

Gyeonggi Province notes that there are many opinions from the field that rapid testing is necessary for preemptive containment of large-scale infection spread, and takes the position that rapid diagnostic kits and similar tools are needed in that they can serve a screening role to determine diagnostic targets rather than for diagnosis itself.

Governor Lee also recommended ▲expansion of dedicated treatment beds for severe and special patients and temporary operational hospitals ▲operation of temporary care facilities for high-risk groups among families exposed to home-care patients.

Gyeonggi Province states that a crisis may occur due to insufficient dedicated treatment beds for severe and special patients, and takes the position that at the national level, university hospital-level private infectious disease dedicated hospitals should be directly designated and managed for the Seoul Metropolitan Area to jointly utilize.

High-risk groups among families of home-care patients refer to people among families of home-care patients receiving treatment at home due to bed shortages who are people with disabilities, elderly people, or those with underlying diseases.

Governor Lee proposed, "Patients requiring dialysis occurred intensively in Gyeonggi Province, and we would appreciate it if you would pay attention to securing dedicated treatment beds for such special patients," and continued, "As we operate a home care system, high-risk groups inevitably occur. Government-level attention is needed so that we can also secure temporary care facilities for these people."

Meanwhile, the meeting was held on the 9th when new confirmed cases reached 686, the second-highest number on record, for President Moon Jae-in to directly review the COVID-19 response situation in the Seoul Metropolitan Area. The meeting was conducted via video conference.