Quarantine Preparedness & Responses to 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and Paralympics Games

Hwang Ji-Hye, Son Tae-Jong, Park Gi-Jun
Division of Quarantine Support, Center for Control of Infectious Diseases, KCDC

For the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and Paralympics Games in Korea from February 9 through March 18, we prepared possible quarantine countermeasures about 6 months prior to the competition in order to prevent the inflow of emerging infectious disease and to respond promptly to the suspected cases with infectious disease in collaboration with relevant institutions for training of quarantine officers, and on-site inspection of quarantine stations. During the two international events, the national quarantine stations performed quarantine inspection for a total of 5,503 passengers from 14 countries: 4,725 persons from ‘quarantinable disease risk areas’, 750 persons from the DPRK, 28 transit passengers from overseas. Among them, although 184 entrants with symptoms such as fever and diarrhea were detected, including 6 athletes for Olympics and Paralympics, there were no suspected cases of quarantinable diseases. To protect the public’s health from emerging infectious diseases, the Korea Centers for Disease Control is striving for establishing more efficient and advanced quarantine system to enable prompt quarantine response to international events at the point of entry to Korea.

Keywords: 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, Paralympics, Quarantine, Emerging infectious disease