Skip to content

Subscriber Only

Prognosis

Government Adviser on Virus Says U.K. Should Follow South Korea

A medical worker hands a document to a driver at a coronavirus testing station in Seoul, April 24. — A medical worker hands a document to a driver at a coronavirus testing station in Seoul, April 24.
Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg

By

April 26, 2020, 10:47 AM UTC

A top disease expert advising the government said that the U.K. should look to implement a strategy similar to South Korea’s in order to ease the lockdown measures stifling the country’s economy.

Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist and member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies that’s advising the government on the virus, said that if the rate of infection can be kept sufficiently low, the country could hope to institute contact-tracing measures similar to South Korea. The Asian country has one of the lowest mortality rates from coronavirus in the world, with 240 deaths as of Sunday.