Military should take responsibility for quarantine failure
The worst-ever mass infection among service members has taken place among South Korea’s Cheonghae unit aboard the 4,400-ton ROK Navy destroyer Munmu the Great, which is carrying out an antipiracy mission in the Gulf of Aden off the Somali coast. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Monday that 247 sailors or 82 percent of the 301 crew have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Unable to operate the unit or the destroyer any longer due to the unprecedented infection cluster, the military sent two KC-330 aerial tanker/transport aircraft to Africa, Sunday, to airlift all of the sailors home. They are expected to return here Tuesday, about a month ahead of their original schedule.
The military cannot avoid criticism for its poor response to COVID-19. It should be held accountable for mishandling the pandemic among service members. The authorities were found to have failed to take timely and appropriate quarantine steps from the start, resorting to only stopgap measures in the absence of a proper contingency manual. For starters, they did not vaccinate the sailors though the vessel is exposed to infection risks with a large number of sailors crowded in closed spaces with interconnected ventilation ducts.
The military said the sailors could not get vaccinated because the vessel embarked on the mission in early February before the domestic inoculation program began. It also cited difficulties in transporting and storing vaccines and coping with the emergency situation as the vessel has been on a mission on far-off seas. Yet this is seen as an excuse for their mistakes. They should have exhausted all possible efforts including mobilizing special air flights to vaccinate the sailors in line with a plan to vaccinate all the country’s service members.
The military said the first COVID-19 case in the unit was reported July 2, yet the medical staff treated the patient with only cold medicine without subjecting him to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. Though many sailors complained of cold symptoms up to July 10, medical staff conducted only antibody tests which found them negative for the virus. Six sailors tested positive belatedly on July 13 after they underwent PCR tests.
All of this proves the authorities failed to check the spread of the coronavirus although they had several chances to do so. Defense Minister Suh Wook instructed the military to take stricter quarantine measures only when 38 cases broke out onboard the landing ship Gojungbong in April. Despite this instruction, the recent case shows that no due checks, isolation or treatments were made for more than 10 days after the first case broke out among the Cheonghae unit.
President Moon Jae-in and his administration also cannot deflect criticism. Whenever they boasted of “quarantine success” the nation suffered from the lack of vaccines and more mass infections, which have led to the current fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moon has said that Korea has been recognized as the world’s exemplary case in responding to the coronavirus. Now we have to ask him a question: How on earth could such a nation fail to vaccinate sailors on an important overseas mission and have them return carrying COVID-19?
The worst-ever mass infection among service members has taken place among South Korea’s Cheonghae unit aboard the 4,400-ton ROK Navy destroyer Munmu the Great, which is carrying out an antipiracy mission in the Gulf of Aden off the Somali coast. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Monday that 247 sailors or 82 percent of the 301 crew have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Unable to operate the unit or the destroyer any longer due to the unprecedented infection cluster, the military sent two KC-330 aerial tanker/transport aircraft to Africa, Sunday, to airlift all of the sailors home. They are expected to return here Tuesday, about a month ahead of their original schedule.
The military cannot avoid criticism for its poor response to COVID-19. It should be held accountable for mishandling the pandemic among service members. The authorities were found to have failed to take timely and appropriate quarantine steps from the start, resorting to only stopgap measures in the absence of a proper contingency manual. For starters, they did not vaccinate the sailors though the vessel is exposed to infection risks with a large number of sailors crowded in closed spaces with interconnected ventilation ducts.
The military said the sailors could not get vaccinated because the vessel embarked on the mission in early February before the domestic inoculation program began. It also cited difficulties in transporting and storing vaccines and coping with the emergency situation as the vessel has been on a mission on far-off seas. Yet this is seen as an excuse for their mistakes. They should have exhausted all possible efforts including mobilizing special air flights to vaccinate the sailors in line with a plan to vaccinate all the country’s service members.
The military said the first COVID-19 case in the unit was reported July 2, yet the medical staff treated the patient with only cold medicine without subjecting him to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. Though many sailors complained of cold symptoms up to July 10, medical staff conducted only antibody tests which found them negative for the virus. Six sailors tested positive belatedly on July 13 after they underwent PCR tests.
All of this proves the authorities failed to check the spread of the coronavirus although they had several chances to do so. Defense Minister Suh Wook instructed the military to take stricter quarantine measures only when 38 cases broke out onboard the landing ship Gojungbong in April. Despite this instruction, the recent case shows that no due checks, isolation or treatments were made for more than 10 days after the first case broke out among the Cheonghae unit.
President Moon Jae-in and his administration also cannot deflect criticism. Whenever they boasted of “quarantine success” the nation suffered from the lack of vaccines and more mass infections, which have led to the current fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moon has said that Korea has been recognized as the world’s exemplary case in responding to the coronavirus. Now we have to ask him a question: How on earth could such a nation fail to vaccinate sailors on an important overseas mission and have them return carrying COVID-19?
Mass infection in warship
Source: Buhay Kapa PH
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