Masked Man

I was told to report to work with a flu mask tomorrow. Apparently the masks were made mandatory by the Ministry of Education, although there was no mention of the policy on the ministry's website.

The Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (KCDC) English website also makes no mention of the mask policy.

Unfortunately, the H1N1 specific pages on the KCDC website are only in Korean.

The latest KCDC press release (10/30/09), states that the H1N1 School Vaccination Program will be started a week earlier than planned. The program will now commence on November 11th instead of the 18th.

A previous briefing by the Ministry's Central Influenza Headquarters, stated that after inoculation, it takes two weeks for enough antibodies to develop to protect against the flu. So the first children inoculated will not be protected until November 25th.

The release, dated October 26th, also states that, "given the current fatality rate of the pandemic, the Headquarters said that it is not considering to upscale the current phase of the crisis nor implement a nationwide school closure."

According to the Korea Times, HQ has changed its mind.

The administration will likely upgrade the nation's alert level to "Red," today . .
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The change in the alert level is due to the surge in confirmed infections last week.

According to the China View website, "The move comes as there were an average 8,857 people confirmed as having infected the Influenza A every day last week from 4,420 tallied the week before."

The Korea Times, also reports that there is likely to be an uptick in the number of reported cases due to the current cold snap, which is expected to last until midweek.