South Korean health authorities have imposed so-called cohort isolation on a psychiatric ward at a hospital in the southeastern county of Cheongdo after a cluster of the novel coronavirus cases were reported at the hospital in recent days.
 
Cohort isolation refers to a special quarantine measure to take care of patients with the same disease in a group.
 
The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention chief Jung Eun-kyeong said in a regular news briefing on Saturday that COVID-19 cases reported at Daenam Hospital were mostly from its psychiatric ward.
 
Jung said that patients at the ward subject to cohort isolation have light symptoms of the virus and have no pneumonia, adding psychiatrists, military physicians and public health doctors will be mobilized for their treatment.
 
As of Saturday, 111 of 256 patients and medical workers at the hospital were found to have been infected with the deadly virus.