Early Laboratory Preparedness of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency and Response to Unknown Pneumonia Outbreak from Wuhan, China, in January 2020.

Kim, Il-Hwan; Kang, Byung-Hak; Seo, Seung Hee; Park, Ye Eun; Kim, Gab Jung; Lee, Sang Won; Jang, Jun Hyeong; Jo, Su Kyoung; Jeon, Jun Ho; Kim, Jeong-Min; Chung, Yoon-Seok; Han, Myung-Guk; Jung, Sang-Oun; Kim, Junyoung; Hwang, Kyu-Jam; Yoo, Cheon-Kwon; Rhie, Gi-Eun

We report the response process of the Laboratory Analysis Task Force (LATF) for Unknown Disease Outbreaks (UDOs) at the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) during January 2020 to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which developed as a UDO in Korea. The advanced preparedness offered by the laboratory diagnostic algorithm for UDOs related to respiratory syndromes was critical for the rapid identification of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and enabled us to establish and expand the diagnostic capacity for COVID-19 on a national scale in a timely manner.