South Korean mayor tells 2.5 million to stay home as coronavirus cases surge
![A woman wears a face mask](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/QQPXvxZEYU5heVh6HEHNo8-415-80.jpg)
The mayor of the South Korean city of Daegu urged the city's 2.5 million people to stay home after a concentration of coronavirus cases broke out at a church where a woman continued attending services after developing symptoms, The Guardian reports. The number of cases linked to the churchgoer reached 49, nearly half of South Korea's new cases.
"We are in an unprecedented crisis," said the mayor, Kwon Young-jin. Schools in the city reportedly are considering delaying the start of the spring term, currently scheduled for early March. South Korea on Thursday reported its first death from the virus, the ninth outside of mainland China. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the man died in a hospital and posthumously tested positive for coronavirus.
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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.
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