Two patients who were reportedly in the psychiatric ward tested positive for the virus on Wednesday, prompting authorities to begin testing all patients and staff. The man who died had shown symptoms of pneumonia but his status was only established posthumously.

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At the centre of the church cluster is a 61-year-old woman, a follower of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Daegu, who was earlier diagnosed as the country’s 31st patient. The cluster has been described as a “super-spreading event” by the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

In a press release on Wednesday, the KCDC pointed to a number of cases attending the “same Korean cult” as the 31st patient.

The church has closed all its facilities across the country, urging its followers to attend online prayer sessions instead. It also promised to cooperate closely with health authorities.

But Pastor Shin Hyun-uk, an anti-cult campaigner, is concerned there might be many more cases linked to the Shincheonji church, citing its aggressive public evangelical campaigns and its “study rooms” where potential believers are clandestinely educated.

“Their so-called ‘harvesters’ go to other Christian churches, take part in prayer sessions there and engage in other activities in order to woo away ordinary believers,” he told the South China Morning Post.

“I doubt whether the church would come clean about the movements of its believers who were with the 31st patient and cooperate with authorities in tracing contacts for fear that it would reveal their secret evangelistic activities. This is really a worrisome situation.”

A rare interview with a Shincheonji follower in local media has cast light on how the 31st patient came dangerously close to other followers when she attended prayer sessions over the past two Sundays.

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Married women gather on the fourth floor of the Daegu branch’s eight-storey building, while unmarried women and men congregate on the eighth floor and married men assemble on the seventh.

During these sessions, congregants crowd into halls where they sit so close as to literally “rub their shoulders”, chant and praise God “at the top of their voice” for half an hour and listen to a sermon for about an hour.

“We were told to remove face masks while attending prayer sessions,” the unnamed follower told newspaper Nocut News. After a session, followers form many small groups to exchange pleasantries, while married women usually throw potluck parties.

According to a statement from Shincheonji, church officials had been advising followers since late January to stay at home if they had recently travelled overseas or were experiencing even mild cold-like symptoms.

But the 31st patient assumed she was having a common cold and kept coming to her Daegu church because she didn’t travel overseas, church officials said. “We think it’s deeply regrettable … for causing concerns to the local community,” the statement said.

There are 14 million Christians in South Korea, with an estimated 2 million of these being involved in fringe churches. 

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Established in 1984, the Shincheonji church has 200,000 followers across the country, including some 13,000 in Daegu. According to anti-cult campaigner Shin, it has some 20,000 followers in about 30 other territories including Japan, China, Hong Kong and countries in Southeast Asia.

“They are in general seen as a dangerous, vile cult that has been growing fast by abusing the belief in the last judgment,” he said, referring to some denominations’ belief in the second coming of Christ. “Many Christian churches [in South Korea] put up warnings on their doors against Shincheonji followers entering their facilities.”

Shincheonji claims its founder, Lee Man-hee, 88 has donned the mantle of Jesus Christ and will take 144,000 people with him to heaven on the day of judgment.

Park Hyung-tak, head of the Korea Christian Heresy Research Institute, said the outbreak was a blow to Shincheonji, which describes its followers as “chosen people favoured by God”. “Most believers accept this large cluster of cases occurring at the church as a test of their belief,” he said.

Daegu mayor Kwon Young-jin on Thursday said another 90 people among some 1,000 followers who attended prayer sessions with the 31st patient were complaining of suspected symptoms.

“We’ve been tracing all the 1,001 people who took part in prayer sessions together,” he told journalists, adding that the 90 people were told to quarantine themselves at their residences.

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Kwon urged Daegu’s 2.5 million residents to refrain from going outside as cases spike, and asked them to wear masks even indoors if possible. He expressed fears that the rising infections in the region will soon overwhelm the city’s health infrastructure and called for urgent help from the central government in Seoul.

The surge in the number of infected people this week has forced health authorities to admit the virus is being transmitted within the community, despite tight quarantine efforts.

“At this stage, [the government] judged that Covid-19 is spreading locally with a limited scope,” vice health and welfare minister Kim Kang-lip told reporters, adding that authorities plan to expand quarantine and prevention work to cope with local transmission.

Additional reporting by Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Yonhap