South Korea: how early Covid competence gave way to a second wave

Number of cases, while still tiny by western standards, is on the rise

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In April, South Korea was being held up as an example of how to contain the coronavirus outbreak. A combination of aggressive testing, contact-tracing and isolation had helped it flatten the curve, despite its proximity to China - the centre of the original outbreak - and without a single day of lockdown.

The World Health Organization singled it out for praise, the government embarked on a campaign of coronavirus diplomacy" with countries struggling with much bigger outbreaks and death tolls, and released a detailed guide to managing a pandemic, the South Korean way.