outh Korean health officials said Saturday that for the first time since the country’s first confirmed coronavirus case, there have been more recoveries than active cases. According to the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 4,881 cases are recovered and 4,597 are active.

“We believe this to be the result of selfless efforts made by the public, who worked to maintain disinfectant process while actively participating in social distancing,” said KCDC Deputy Director Kwon Joon Wook during a regular briefing.

The Johns Hopkins University global tracker indicates that South Korea has the 10th highest number of cases in the world with 9,478 cases and 144 deaths. Worldwide, there have been at least 615,000 cases and 28,700 deaths.

Wook stressed that Koreans “must not let complacency take place” as some infections are still causing deaths. He added that people should not break from strict social distancing measures until at least April 5, or else face fines or even a yearlong imprisonment.

Worldwide, the United States has topped the list of the number of cases with 104,860 cases and 1,711 deaths, according to the global tracker Saturday morning. Italy has the second highest number of cases in the world — 86,498 — and has been hardest hit in regard to number of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic. The country has reported 9,134 deaths and recorded its worst 24 hours Friday with 919 deaths from the respiratory illness between Thursday and Friday alone.

China now has the third-highest number of cases, 81,996, and 3,299 deaths. Spain is the second-hardest hit country in Europe with 72,248 cases and 5,690 deaths. It also reported Friday a record one-day figure for fatalities after 769 people died in 24 hours.

Germany has the fifth most cases in the world, according to the global tracker. Still, with 399 deaths in Germany, the death rate has been substantially lower than Italy, Spain and Britain.

Britain has 14,754 cases and 761 deaths. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson became the first head of government Friday to announce he tested positive for COVID-19. So far, he’s experienced mild symptoms.

India, which has 1.3 billion people, the second-highest population in the world next to China, has the world’s largest coronavirus lockdown and thousands of migrant workers are trying to leave major cities after the lockdown left them without jobs or pay.

Last week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said Ireland was following the South Korean model for tackling the coronavirus outbreak. South Korea has been lauded internationally for managing to significantly slow the number of new cases of the virus, despite an early spike.

“After MERS the government put together a national infectious diseases control act” says Dr Jerome Kim, who is Director General of the International Vaccine Institute based in Seoul. The legislation, he says, “allows for the government to track people, and for the tracking information to be posted online, so that people would know if they’d passed through a certain subway station at a certain time that they might consider themselves exposed, and might consider getting tested if they develop symptoms.“

Professor Gye Cheol Kwon, the chairman of the Laboratory Medicine Foundation said many things have worked in combination to make South Korea’s strategy a success. “Early patient detection, followed by isolation and contact tracing have been important,” he says.

The country recently started screening visitors from overseas, meaning that you must undergo a test on arrival into the country. “They screen you when you come through the airport. They put you in a holding facility which is like a hotel room, and the next day they tell you your result.

The use of face masks is also widespread in South Korea. Professor Gye Cheol Kwon says mask wearing is encouraged in Korea, primarily because it is such a crowded country, and infection could spread rapidly.

“The government’s messaging has to be perfectly clear. There can’t be contradictory messages, these only confuse people. The government has to be transparent, to explain what it’s doing.”

”As the number of new cases has dropped, they noticed that the greater number of new cases was coming from outside of Korea, and that’s when they started screening people from outside. They used the data and acted on it.“

Osang Healthcare, a South Korean manufacturer and distributor of medical supplies, is set to provide 100,000 COVID-19 test kits to Morocco. The Moroccan government secured the deal with Osang on March 26.

The kits detect the virus through DNA testing, providing a fast and easily accessible way to identify the clusters of infection promptly, as a result contributing to containing the spreading of COVID-19. Early testing is an efficient method for preventing the spread of viral diseases.

The contract agrees on priority supplies of 100,000 kits for Moroccan people. Osang Healthcare has added extra 10,000 kits free of charge as a goodwill donation.

The kits will reach Morocco via a special flight that will also return Korean citizens from Africa, decided in cooperation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Moroccan ministry is also helping to negotiate the supply of kits for other African governments.

On 16 January, the South Korean biotech executive Chun Jong-yoon grasped the reality unfolding in China and directed his lab to work to stem the virus’s inevitable spread; within days, his team developed detection kits now in high demand around the world.

Existing governmental units in the ministries of health, welfare and foreign affairs, regional municipalities and the president’s office were mobilised to deal with the virus. As a result, South Korea has been effective in controlling the nation’s mortality rate not through travel bans but instead through widespread rigorous quarantine measures and testing, Now even exporting domestically produced test kits – such as the 51,000 diagnostic products sent this week to the United Arab Emirates.

Most importantly, South Korea immediately began testing hundreds of thousands of asymptomatic people, including at drive-through centres. South Korea employed a central tracking app, Corona 100m, that publicly informs citizens of known cases within 100 metres of where they are.

Other nations would be wise to copy the South Korean model: on 29 February, 700 people tested positive in the primary South Korean outbreak city of Daegu. By 15 March, 41 new cases were reported there.

From 16 March, South Korea started to screen all people arriving at airports, Koreans included. South Koreans have universal health care, double the number of hospital beds compared to Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) norms (and triple that of the UK), and are accustomed to paying half what Americans pay for similar medical procedures. At this historic juncture, there has been a general consensus to trust in and respect the advice coming from doctors and scientists.

It took Thomas Streetman two hours to walk out his front door, take a cab to the public health center, get tested for the coronavirus and make it back to his apartment. He, who works as a marketing manager at a gaming company in Seoul, received his negative results in less than 24 hours and is now one of more than 327,000 people out of the country’s 51 million-strong population to have been tested for the coronavirus in South Korea since the country confirmed its first case Jan. 21.

Since March 11, South Korea has seen a general decline in the number of new coronavirus cases, some as low as 74 and 76 each day — a stark comparison to its peak of 909 cases Feb. 29.

News that China had reported its first case of the coronavirus was enough reason for South Korean leaders and medical staff to brace themselves for the worst. “Acting fast was the most important decision South Korea made,” said Hwang Seung-Sik, a professor at Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Public Health. Active collaboration among central and regional government officials and medical staff took place before cases began piling up, enabling South Korea’s current testing capacity of 20,000 people a day at 633 sites, including drive-thru centers and even phone booths. Under South Korea’s single-payer health care system, getting tested costs $134. But with a doctor’s referral or for those who’ve made contact with an infected person, testing is free.

South Korean leaders have amped up efficiency for overwhelmed hospitals by digitally monitoring lower-risk patients under quarantine, as well as keeping close tabs on visiting travelers who are required to enter their symptoms into an app. Sites like Corona Map generate real-time updates about where current patients are located and inform proactive Koreans focused on protecting themselves.

Commuters wait at platforms and in subway cars as announcements are played in different languages, including English and Chinese. A female voice lists tips such as “blocking” your mouth when coughing. Now, hand sanitizer bottles are placed in front of nearly every entrance and elevator for public use. And of the 1,000 people who took part in a study by Seoul National University, 97.6 percent responded that they at least sometimes wear a mask when they are outside, 63.6 percent of whom said they always wear one.

South Korea has already started new testing on all arrivals from Europe, according to local news reports, preparing for a “second wave” of imported clusters. Even those who test negative are required to self-quarantine for 14 days. “We are proceeding with cautious hopefulness,” Hwang said.

On Sunday, South Korea reported only 64 new cases, the fewest in nearly a month, even as infections in other countries continue to soar by the thousands daily, devastating health care systems and economies. Italy records several hundred deaths daily; South Korea has not had more than eight in a day.

South Korea is one of only two countries with large outbreaks, alongside China, to flatten the curve of new infections. And it has done so without China’s draconian restrictions on speech and movement, or economically damaging lockdowns like those in Europe and the United States.

The lessons from South Korea, while hardly easy, appear relatively straightforward and affordable: swift action, widespread testing and contact tracing, and critical support from citizens. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has hailed South Korea as demonstrating that containing the virus, while difficult, “can be done.” He urged countries to “apply the lessons learned in Korea and elsewhere.”

Just one week after the country’s first case was diagnosed in late January, government officials met with representatives from several medical companies. They urged the companies to begin immediately developing coronavirus test kits for mass production, promising emergency approval. Within two weeks, though South Korea’s confirmed cases remained in the double digits, thousands of test kits were shipping daily. The country now produces 100,000 kits per day, and officials say they are in talks with 17 foreign governments about exporting them.

South Korea has tested far more people for the coronavirus than any other country, enabling it to isolate and treat many people soon after they are infected. The country has conducted over 300,000 tests, for a per-capita rate more than 40 times that of the United States.

To spare hospitals and clinics from being overwhelmed, officials opened 600 testing centers designed to screen as many people as possible, as quickly as possible — and keep health workers safe by minimizing contact. At 50 drive-through stations, patients are tested without leaving their cars. At some walk-in centers, patients enter a chamber resembling a transparent phone booth. Health workers administer throat swabs using thick rubber gloves built into the chamber’s walls.

When someone tests positive, health workers retrace the patient’s recent movements to find, test — and, if necessary, isolate — anyone the person may have had contact with, a process known as contact tracing. Health officials would retrace patients’ movements using security camera footage, credit card records, even GPS data from their cars and cellphones. This allows health workers to identify networks of possible transmission early. As the coronavirus outbreak grew too big to track patients so intensively, officials relied more on mass messaging to let the public know about the new cases.

By identifying and treating infections early, and segregating mild cases to special centers, South Korea has kept hospitals clear for the most serious patients. Its case fatality rate is just over one percent, among the lowest in the world.

“This public trust has resulted in a very high level of civic awareness and voluntary cooperation that strengthens our collective effort,” Lee Tae-ho, the vice minister of foreign affairs, told reporters earlier this month. Officials also credit the country’s nationalized health care system, which guarantees most care, and special rules covering coronavirus-related costs, as giving even people with no symptoms greater incentive to get tested.

For all the attention to South Korea’s successes, its methods and containment tools are not prohibitively complex or expensive. Experts cite three major hurdles to following South Korea’s lead, none related to cost or technology. One is political will. Many governments have hesitated to impose onerous measures in the absence of a crisis-level outbreak. Another is public will. Social trust is higher in South Korea than in many other countries, particularly Western democracies. And time poses the greatest challenge. It may be “too late,” Dr. Ki said, for countries deep into epidemics to control outbreaks as quickly or efficiently as South Korea has.