SEOUL – More than 100 workers at a factory east of Seoul have tested positive for the coronavirus, officials said Wednesday, becoming the latest in a recent string of mass infections at industrial workplaces, reported Yonhap News Agency.
According to the municipal officials of Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province, as many as 114 employees from a single factory in the city’s Jingwan General Industrial Complex, about 40km from Seoul, have been diagnosed with Covid-19.
The newest cluster of factory worker infections has been confirmed after health authorities conducted coronavirus tests on all of the factory’s 158 workers, they said.
A large number of the infected workers are foreign nationals and reportedly live together at a company dormitory.
The tests on all of the plant’s workers came after a foreign employee tested positive for Covid-19 at a hospital in central Seoul last Saturday after displaying fever symptoms.
The officials said 113 more workers were found to be infected today morning and five others will be retested soon due to indecisive results.
Meanwhile, the number of confirmed cases tied to a separate coronavirus cluster from a boiler factory in central South Korea has risen to 122, the relevant local government said.
The tally from the virus cluster of the Kiturami Boiler plant in Asan, South Chungcheong province, has been updated after 22 more factory workers were confirmed to be infected.
Asan officials speculate that the virus may have spread among over 100 workers through fan heaters in one of the boiler plant’s poorly ventilated buildings. – Bernama, February 17, 2021
