CNN, US news agency, reported on how Korea has quickly developed the test kits for coronavirus on 13th of March. On January 16, Chun Jong-yoon, the chief executive and founder of molecular biotech company Seegene, started focusing on coronavirus. That was before the virus sweeping China had been named Covid-19 and four days ahead of South Korea confirming its first case.

While some nations have struggled to get enough test kits to diagnose suspected patients, South Korea has provided free and easy access to testing for anyone who a doctor deems needs it. “Detecting patients at an early stage is very important,” South Korea’s health minister Park Neung-hu told CNN Monday. “South Korea is an open society and would like to protect the freedom of people moving around and traveling. That is why we’re conducting mass amount of tests.”

The Seegene houses an artificial intelligence-based big data system, which has enabled the firm to quickly develop a test for coronavirus. The newly developed test kits was approved for its use by South Korea’s authorities in a week and could be used in the hospitals all over Korea.

After the country’s President Moon Jae-in raised the country’s crisis alert to the highest level on February 23, all employees of Seegene would drop all other work and focus on making coronavirus test kits. Production of the company’s 50 or so other products temporarily ceased for two weeks. The firm is making about 10,000 kits a week and each kit can test 100 patients. So it is making enough to test one million patients each week.

According to Chun, the reason that South Korea has been able to test a massive number of people is that scientists are using automatic testing, which takes only four hours to test samples from 94 patients — four times faster than the manual method. It also reduces the risk of human error or contamination.

Chun wants to help health authorities overseas. “The issue is they have no chance to test the people properly,” he said. “Without the proper diagnosis, nobody knows what’s going on.”

According to the BBC article reported on 12th of March, nearly 20,000 people are being tested every day for coronavirus in South Korea in a network of 96 public and private laboratories to test for the virus. Health officials believe this approach may be saving lives, and the figure is more people per capita than anywhere else in the world. The fatality rate for coronavirus in South Korea is 0.7%, compared to 3.4% of global rate.

The South Koreans managed to design and create a test, set up a network of labs across the country and get it all to work in 17 days. Professor Gye Cheol Kwon, the chairman of the Laboratory Medicine Foundation, said Korea learned the risk of new infection and its ramifications from the experience of the Middle East Respiratory syndrome (Mers) back in 2015. In addition, he thinks that early patient detection with accurate tests followed by isolation can lower the mortality rate and prevent the virus from spreading, and also, to learn from the past and prepare systems in advance might be the true power to overcome this new kind of disaster.

There is no shortage of testing kits in South Korea because four companies have been given approval to make them and producing 140,000 kits per week. Prof Kwon believes the accuracy of South Korea’s Covid-19 test is around 98%. The Korean doctors have learned to treat patients with mild symptoms in residential centres and leave the clinical beds for those needing critical care.

The blood of recovered patients is also being monitored and analysed. Scientists have developed a “unique” protein that can detect antibodies – the hope is that it will help create a vaccine in the future.

A former patients Mr Lee said it’s really important to still be cautious and safe, but I wish people would have less fear of the virus itself.

The preventative measures being taken in South Korea have so far involved no lockdowns, no roadblocks and no restriction on movement. Trace, test and treat is the main method of the response. So far this country of over 50 million people have been doing their bit to help. Offices are encouraging people to work from home, large gatherings have stopped. Most people wear masks. There are thermal imaging cameras in the entrances to major buildings. Bottles of hand sanitisers have been placed in lifts. There are even people dressed in costumes at subway entrances reminding you to wash your hands.