"What Happened During the Quarantine Decision Process..." Yoon Hee-sook Questions Jeong Eun-kyeong's Paper

Jung Eun-kyung, Commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, is attending the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters (CDSCH) meeting on COVID-19 response held at the Government Seoul Office on the morning of the 22nd. Photo by Yonhap News Agency

[Asia Economy Reporter Hana Na] Yoon Hee-sook, a member of the People Power Party, raised questions about the recent paper published by Jeong Eun-kyung, Commissioner of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), asking, "What on earth happened during the decision-making process of quarantine measures?"

On the 24th, Yoon said on her Facebook, "It has only now become known that the person responsible for quarantine argued for a policy shift towards in-person classes in an academic paper."

Regarding the paper published on the 27th of last month by Commissioner Jeong along with a research team from Hallym University College of Medicine in the Journal of Pediatric Infectious Diseases, Yoon introduced the content as follows: "As is well known from cases in other countries, school infection cases in Korea are extremely rare. Therefore, since the benefits of school closures are minimal, the argument is to shift the direction of quarantine policy towards in-person classes."

She pointed out, "This paper, which has become a topic of discussion, reveals fundamental flaws in the quarantine policy decision-making structure, indicating a level of seriousness on a different scale."

She added, "As you know, ensuring children's educational opportunities is one of the most difficult and important decisions in quarantine policy," and "the fact that the paper was submitted at the end of October means that the data analysis results came out much earlier. If so, these results should have been disclosed in the second half of last year, and the public should have been informed of the basis for decisions and asked for understanding regarding the expansion of in-person classes."

She continued, "It is hard to believe that the person responsible for quarantine did not present such opinions during the policy decision process and only expressed them in an academic journal," and said, "It is incomprehensible why such opinions were ignored during the policy decision process and have not been disclosed until now."

Yoon urged, "The authorities must clearly reveal what opinions Commissioner Jeong expressed regarding the expansion of in-person classes during the formulation of quarantine measures and on what grounds those opinions were dismissed."