Reasons for Proposal
To prevent the spread of infectious diseases, it is most important to comply with the quarantine guidelines such as wearing a mask and making a list of visitors. In fact, the main cause of the continuing sporadic group infection cases in recent months has been violations of the quarantine guidelines, such as not wearing a mask.
The basis for the order to comply with the quarantine guidelines for facilities or places at risk of spreading infectious diseases and the basis for administrative fines for non-compliance thereof has been provided through the recent revision of the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act; but for the places or facilities where a large number of people gather, there is a limit to taking effective sanctions only with administrative fines.
Therefore, it is necessary to effectively strengthen the government's quarantine activities by allowing the government to take measures to suspend operations of places or facilities that violate the quarantine guidelines and to take necessary measures, such as disinfection, not only for buildings contaminated with infectious disease pathogens but also for places or facilities suspected of being contaminated. This amendment has added the Minister of Health and Welfare to the persons authorized to make such order to allow the smooth implementation of other measures to comply with the quarantine guidelines and measures such as hospital transfer of patients.
In addition, since the incidence cycle of large-scale infectious diseases is gradually shortening (SARS in 2000, swine flu in 2009, MERS in 2015, MERS in 2018, COVID-19 in 2020) in recent years, and the social and economic impact of infectious diseases is significant, it is more important to take regular preventive measures beyond the follow-up response after the epidemic of infectious diseases. Therefore, this amendment aims to evaluate the risk of disease control and check the compliance with quarantine guidelines by making it mandatory to designate a disease control manager and requiring him/her to complete regular quarantine management training for business sites or multi-use facilities, etc., of a certain size or larger, where the risk of transmission of infection is high due to large crowds.
In addition, it is important to effectively block the spread from becoming nationwide if an infectious disease occurs in a specific area. In the case of group infection from the door-to-door sales business that recently started in Seoul, the infection has spread to Gyeonggi, Chungnam, and Daejeon, so it is necessary to prepare countermeasures. To do this, it is essential to secure sufficient competent disease control officers with the authority to take corrective measures, such as assigning duties to field response personnel, allocating resources, and taking quarantine and disinfection measures at the site of infectious disease outbreaks pursuant to the infectious disease prevention method. Currently, only the Minister of Disease Control has the authority to issue temporary duty orders to disease control officers in the event of an infectious disease epidemic, but this amendment aims to improve regional quarantine capacity and block the nationwide spread through early response by also granting Mayor, Do Governor, or head of the Si/Gun/Gu the authority to issue temporary duty orders (Article 41, Article 49, Article 49-3, Article 60-3, and Article 83).
