How South Korea turned an urban planning system into a COVID-19 tracking database

SEOUL: When a man in Seoul tested positive for the new coronavirus in May, South Korean authorities were able to confirm his wide-ranging movements in and outside the city in minutes, including five bars and clubs he visited on a recent night out.

The new system digitises the entire process, including the requests, and can reduce that time to less than an hour, officials say.The system has had some teething problems, and has attracted criticism on privacy grounds, but it has been a major factor in the East Asian nation of 52 million keeping virus infections at a relatively low 11,122, as of Thursday, with just 264 deaths.

Yoon said she and other authorities used the EISS to trace the movements of the first person detected in the Seoul nightclub outbreak, as he visited a number of places including two nightclubs and three bars.The system is still reliant on humans operating it to approve and upload data, which can lead to delays. And in some cases, concerns over privacy and security have led to access being so restricted that some local officials said they had to rely on old-fashioned methods.

FILE PHOTO: Quarantine workers spray disinfectants at night spots of Itaewon neighborhood, following the coronavirus disease outbreak, in Seoul, South Korea, May 11, 2020. Yonhap/via REUTERSThe EISS was jointly developed by the KCDC and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, with the help of the Korea Electronics Technology Institute .

The EISS allows an authorised investigator to log in to a secure web portal and send information requests about specific confirmed cases. An EISS web portal seen by Reuters showed an interactive map displaying patient movements, with each location data point indicating whether it was collected via credit card or cellphone.

"We spent more time agonising over privacy than on developing the system," said Park Young-joon, a director at the KCDC.

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