koreaherald.com (11.03.2020) The National Health Insurance Service said the lower 20 percent of the income bracket will receive about 30 to 50 percent reduction in premiums from March through May. For the worst-affected Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province’s Gyeongsan, Cheongdo and Bonghwa, the bottom half of income earners will be given the partial premium waivers. The lowered payments are a part of Korea’s disaster relief subsidy plan announced March 30 to cushion financial blow from the outbreak for the financially vulnerable. Under the emergency plan, 1.16 million people are expected to get an average of about 91,559-won reduction in their premiums over the three-month span, officials said.

wwwnc.cdc.gov (17.09.2020) The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) classified the severity of COVID-19 into very severe, severe, mild, and asymptomatic (15) (Appendix Table 1). Mild COVID-19 is defined as alert and meeting >1 of the following conditions: <50 years old, >1 underlying conditions, and temperature <38°C with antipyretic drugs. Asymptomatic is defined as a patient who is alert, <50 years old, has no underlying disease, is a nonsmoker, and has a temperature of <37.5°C without antipyretic drugs. Patients classified as severe or very severe were admitted to hospitals; CTCs only accepted patients classified as having mild or asymptomatic COVID-19. Patients with mild COVID-19 met >1 of the following criteria for CTC admission: they did not necessarily require hospitalization; they only required monitoring; they were unable to properly self-isolate (for instance, they had no suitable place to live or lived with persons in a high-risk group); or, as determined by local government, they needed to be admitted to a CTC. Medical staff assessed patients and excluded persons at high-risk for deterioration from CTCs and recommended hospitalization.