Tag Archives: Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony

Church at centre of South Korea coronavirus outbreak sits silent as infections surge

By Hyonhee Shin

DAEGU, South Korea (Reuters) – Usually teeming with thousands of worshippers, the church at the centre of South Korea’s largest coronavirus outbreak was shuttered and silent on Friday, surrounded by empty streets.

After a few minutes, a young man came out of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony in the city of Daegu and threatened to call the police if anyone tried to get in.

He was the only one there, he told Reuters – “all of our 9,000 believers are at home.” Staff had already cleaned and disinfected the building twice this week, on Tuesday and Wednesday, he said.

The man, who declined to give his name, ventured out to stick a few ‘no entry’ signs on the carpark fence before retreating back into the building.

South Korea reported 100 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus on Friday, taking the national total to 204, the majority in Daegu, the country’s fourth-largest city.

Most of those new cases have been traced to a 61-year-old woman who had taken part in services at the church, authorities said. Other cases were linked to a funeral in a hospital attended by several other church members.

Someone had thrown eggs at the front gate of the building, a sign of the suspicion that has simmered since the cases were reported at the church – a branch of a network of congregations, founded and still run by self-proclaimed messiah Lee Man-hee.

Nearby, residents and shopkeepers said the Daegu church was usually bustling with services several times a week. They found the silence unsettling.

“When a service was over, thousands of people in the same black suits would emerge from the exterior top floor staircase and come all the way down to the ground because they only have two elevators,” said a 28-year-old resident who would only give his surname Seong.

“That would go on for more than 10 minutes. Really bizarre if you watch it. There are that many people.”

Authorities fear those large gatherings played a part in the spread of the virus. More than 500 members in the city were showing symptoms of the virus as of Friday, health officials said, though tests were ongoing.

Further away, most shops and restaurants on Dongseong-ro, one of the city’s main shopping streets, were empty. The handful of people still out on the pavements wore facemasks. An American military base nearby was quiet, gates closed.

Seong said he drove far from his neighbourhood to get groceries or bought things online to avoid contamination.

“The mayor told people to stay home but it’s difficult for many regular company employees like me whose workplaces are open as usual,” he said. “We do avoid going out.”

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

South Korea city deserted after coronavirus church ‘super-spreader’

y Hyonhee Shin and Ryan Woo

SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) – The streets of South Korea’s fourth-largest city were abandoned on Thursday, with residents holed up indoors after dozens of people caught the coronavirus in what the authorities described as a “super-spreading event” at a church.

The deserted shopping malls and cinemas of Daegu, a city of 2.5 million people, became one of the most striking images outside China of an outbreak that international authorities are trying to prevent from spreading into a global pandemic.

New research suggesting the virus was more contagious than previously thought added to the alarm. And in China, where the virus has killed more than 2,100 people, officials changed their methodology for reporting infections, creating new doubt about data they have been citing as evidence of success in fighting its spread.

Deagu Mayor Kwon Young-jin told residents to stay indoors after 90 people who worshipped at the Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony showed symptoms of infection and dozens of new cases were confirmed.

The church had been attended by a 61-year-old woman who tested positive, known as “Patient 31”. Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described the outbreak there as a “super-spreading event”.

“We are in an unprecedented crisis,” Kwon told reporters, adding that all members of the church would be tested. “We’ve asked them to stay at home isolated from their families.”

Describing the abandoned streets, resident Kim Geun-woo, 28, told Reuters by telephone: “It’s like someone dropped a bomb in the middle of the city. It looks like a zombie apocalypse.”

South Korea now has 104 confirmed cases of the flu-like virus, and reported its first death.

In China, officials have been pointing to evidence that new cases were declining as proof they are succeeding in keeping the virus largely contained to Hubei Province and its capital Wuhan, where the virus initially emerged.

But revisions to their methodology have raised doubts about the data. Under the latest methodology, which excludes chest X-rays, China reported fewer than 400 new cases over the past day, less than a quarter of the number it had been finding in recent days under the previous method.

Only last week, another change in Chinese methodology created an overnight spike of nearly 15,000 new cases, reversing a trend of falling numbers that Chinese officials had previously touted as evidence their disease-fighting strategy was working.

Scientists in China who studied nose and throat swabs from 18 patients infected with the virus said it behaves much more like influenza than other closely related viruses, suggesting it may spread even more easily than previously believed.

In at least in one case, the virus was present even though the patient had no symptoms, suggesting symptom-free patients could spread the disease, they wrote in preliminary findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“If confirmed, this is very important,” said Dr Gregory Poland, a vaccine researcher with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who was not involved with the study.

China has imposed severe controls in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, to halt the spread of the virus, and has taken urgent steps to keep the overall economy from crashing.

On Thursday, its central bank cut a borrowing rate, while the authorities extended an order for businesses in Wuhan to shut down until March 11. Schools in the city, which had been due to re-open on Friday, will also stay shut.

TWO CRUISE SHIP PASSENGERS DIE

Japan reported the deaths of two elderly passengers from the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship anchored off Yokohama. They appear to be the first people to have died from the disease from aboard the ship, the biggest cluster of infection outside mainland China with more than 620 cases.

Japan has begun allowing passengers who test negative to disembark from the ship. Hundreds departed on Wednesday and hundreds more were set to leave on Thursday.

The ship was carrying about 3,700 people when quarantined on Feb. 3, about half of them from Japan. Japanese passengers were permitted to go home once cleared to leave; other countries are flying passengers home and keeping them isolated on arrival.

Japan, which is due to host the summer Olympics in July, had faced criticism over its strategy of quarantining people on board the ship. Its National Institute of Infections Diseases published data which it said supported its strategy, showing that the onset of symptoms from confirmed cases had peaked on Feb. 7 and tailed off to zero by Feb. 15.

The NIID report was “very reassuring,” said Kentaro Iwata, an infectious disease specialist from Kobe University Hospital who had been one of the harshest critics of the quarantine.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin in Seoul and Ryan Woo in Beijing; Additional reporting by Linda Sieg, Chang-Ran Kim, Akiko Okamoto, Ju-min Park and Daewong Kim in Tokyo, Sangmi Cha in Seoul, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Parisa Hafezi in Dubai, Keith Zhai and Patpicha Tanakasempipat in Vientiane; Writing by Peter Graff, Editing by Angus MacSwan)