Coronavirus outbreak among Vietnamese at student dormitory in South Korea as Covid-19 cases hit record

Twenty Vietnamese students at a dormitory in Boryeong City have been infected, with hundreds of others living at same facility to be tested

News comes as country records a record 1,078 cases and warns of hospital bed shortage in the capital of Seoul

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A woman attends a coronavirus test centre in Seoul. Photo: Kyodo

Published: 1:25pm, 16 Dec 2020Updated: 1:38pm, 16 Dec 2020

A group of 20 Vietnamese students at a dormitory in southern South Korea were found to be infected with Covid-19 on Wednesday, as the country’s daily new coronavirus cases hit a new record.

Tests were carried out on 162 people – 59 of them students from Vietnam – after a Vietnamese student was found to be infected with the virus on Monday.

The students were living together at a dormitory in the Ajou Motor College in Boryeong City.

In addition to the Vietnamese, the dormitory also houses hundreds of South Korean students, seven from Uzbekistan and one from Thailand.

“We are going to carry out tests on some 300 other students living in the dorm today,” a spokesman for the city told the South China Morning Post.

The 20 new cases meant there had now been 55 infections recorded in Boryeong City, population of 100,000, he said.

A promotional leaflet for the Ajou Motor College in Boryeong City.

“Compared with the Seoul metropolitan area, the situation here is more stable,” said the spokesman, adding that the South Chungcheong province that includes the city still had adequate hospital beds.

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