South Korea was to send military aircraft yesterday to replace the entire 300-member crew of a navy destroyer on a mission to disrupt pirates off East Africa after nearly 70 of them tested positive for COVID-19, officials said.
Two aerial tankers would bring home 300 sailors aboard the 4,400-tonne Chungmugong Yi Sun-sin-class destroyer Munmu the Great, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff and Ministry of Defense officials said on condition of anonymity.
Sixty-eight sailors have so far tested positive and the results on 200 of the 300 crew members are still pending, they said.
Photo: AP
Fifteen sailors are hospitalized in an African country that the officials did not name, while the rest were on the destroyer.
None has been vaccinated for COVID-19 as they left South Korea in early February, before the start of the country’s vaccination campaign, health and military officials said.
The cause of the infections has not been officially announced, but military authorities suspect that the virus might have spread when the destroyer docked at a harbor in the region to resupply late last month.
The replacement crew of 150 navy personnel is to arrive aboard the aerial tankers and move to the destroyer, which is anchored at sea, to sail it back to South Korea on a journey that takes about one month, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Local media reported that the infected sailors would arrive home as early as tomorrow night.
South Korea has taken part in anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden since 2009.
Officials said that the Munmu the Great was to be replaced with another destroyer next month, following a six-month rotational deployment.
The second destroyer is on its way to the area.
Yesterday, South Korean health authorities reported 1,454 new cases, taking the country’s total to 177,951 with 2,057 deaths.
South Korea has imposed its toughest distancing rules on its populous capital region, where most of the recent cases have been found, while authorities are considering more stringent restrictions in other areas as well.
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