Background: In South Korea, many individuals were self-quarantined for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) after the quarantine criteria were extended to all overseas travelers. This study was conducted to identify the non-compliance rate of self-quarantine for COVID-19 cases and assess the impact of a one-strike out policy and an increased amount of penalty for the violating self-quarantine in South Korea. Methods: The self-quarantine non-compliance rate for COVID-19 was examined using publicly available data. We collected the daily number of quarantine and quarantine violation cases from March 22 to June 10, 2020. A Poisson regression analysis was conducted to identify the impact of additional sanctions for the quarantine violation. Results: The median number of individuals quarantined per day was 36,561 (interquartile range of 34,408–41,961). The median number of daily self-quarantine violations was six (range of 0–13). The median rate of self-quarantine violations was 1.6 per 10,000 self-quarantined individuals (range 0.0–8.0 per 10,000 self-quarantined individuals). The additional sanction has no significant impact on the number of violations among quarantine individuals (p=0.99). Conclusions: The additional sanction for the violation of quarantined individuals did not reduce the self-quarantine violations. Further studies are warranted to strengthen the compliance of self-quarantine for future pandemics.

Background Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a concern over possible increase in antibiotic use due to co-infections among COVID-19 patients in the community. Here, we evaluate the changes in nationwide use of broad-spectrum antibiotics during the COVID-19 epidemic in South Korea. Methods We obtained national reimbursement data on the prescription of antibiotics, including penicillin with beta-lactamase inhibitors, cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones, and macrolides. We examined the number of antibiotic prescriptions compared with the previous three years in the same period from August to July. To quantify the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on antibiotic use, we developed a regression model adjusting for changes of viral acute respiratory tract infections (ARTIs) which are an important factor driving antibiotic use. Results During the COVID-19 epidemic in South Korea, the broad-spectrum antibiotic use dropped by 15%–55% compared to the previous 3 years. Overall reduction in antibiotic use adjusting for ARTIs was estimated to be 14%–30%, with a larger impact in children. Conclusions Our study found that broad-spectrum antibiotic use was substantially reduced during the COVID-19 epidemic in South Korea. This reduction can be in part due to reduced ARTIs as a result of stringent public health interventions including social distancing measures.

The STEM field has contributed significantly to the development of society because its findings result in new technology, which gives people more efficient tools and methods for a better standard of living. Postsecondary institutions have trained STEM field graduates through advanced curricula and learning environments. Compared to other academic fields, STEM requires more monetary support for research from the institution or the government because STEM research often requires expensive equipment installation or the introduction of new technologies. This paper overviews institutional support for STEM education and research by the regime of recent U.S. governments and examines the characteristics of R&D (research and development) expenditure. The results indicate that the R&D expenditures of the STEM field show continuous support for the different type of institutions, regardless of governments over time. However, they have tried to diversify the R&D investment by the type of R&D field and institutional type. Even though the government has tried to increase the total size of R&D expenditure through various resources, they still need to consider the equity and diversity issues for even further R&D investment strategies. A further research direction would search for the detailed action and strategies to support the STEM field according to their types of support or expectation.

In the present study, we investigated the pattern of changes in antibiotic prescription and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Escherichia coli in South Korea between 2007 and 2018. We collected data related to antibiotic prescription and AMR in E. coli from the national surveillance system. We used the Mann–Kendall test and Spearman’s correlation to identify the trends of antibiotic prescription and AMR in E. coli and to examine the relationship between them, respectively. Although we noted a significant decreasing trend of ampicillin and gentamicin prescriptions in all medical institutions, we identified a higher level of AMR in long-term care facilities than in other medical institutions. We did not identify a significant positive correlation between ampicillin and gentamicin prescriptions and their resistance in E. coli. However, we found a significant positive correlation between cefotaxime prescription and its resistance in E. coli in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and clinics. Our results strongly suggest that long-term care facilities in South Korea have the potential to sustain AMR epidemics and that more efforts are needed to curb AMR in E. coli. Further epidemiological studies using enhanced AMR surveillance are warranted.

No abstract