South Korea, which has succeeded in controlling the spread of the coronavirus, is now seeking ways to prevent the second wave of the virus in the future. On April 8, the Reuters reported about South Korea’s plan to prevent the virus from re-spreading.

South Korea, among the first countries to bring a major coronavirus outbreak under control, is now taking steps to control the disease well into the future, relying heavily on technology and its hyper-connected society.

The aim is to reinvigorate Asia’s fourth-largest economy and keep it humming by building on the country’s success identifying and tracking cases without imposing major mandatory lockdowns or requiring businesses to keep employees working from home, officials say.

South Korea’s virus-containment strategy will build on an intensive contact tracing and testing campaign that experts say has been instrumental in uncovering webs of infections that might otherwise have gone undetected.

Besides the testing kits and tracing techniques that have already been rolled out, South Korea plans to build out a “smart city” database and get quarantine violators to agree to use tracking bracelets. The database will be operated by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), giving epidemiological investigators real-time data feeds on patients, including their whereabouts, times spent at specific locations, CCTV footage, and credit card transactions. That could cut the time needed to trace a patient’s movements from about one day to around ten 10 minutes, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, or MOLIT, which originally set up the “smart city” initiative.

Another key to the South Korean virus containment strategy is stepping up border controls. Around half of new cases in recent weeks have been found in people arriving from overseas, according to the KCDC.

Rather than outright bans, South Korea is using widespread testing and technology-enabled tracking to allow people to travel to the country. Mandatory testing and quarantines now apply to nearly all arrivals from overseas, including citizens.

Health officials say they are also looking to adapt the social distancing policies they called for early in the crisis – urging people to avoid large gatherings or leave their homes, but imposing no actual “stay home” orders – in coming weeks.

The government plans to develop more practices in homes, offices, and public places to reduce the risk of another large outbreak, while allowing economic and social life to resume. In a glimpse of what could become long-term practices, the KCDC last week outlined preventive measures for schools, churches and some entertainment facilities that included disinfection schedules, guidelines on how close people can be to each other and temperature checks.