South Korea is telling its citizens to stay home and avoid gatherings, in an anti-coronavirus campaign known as “social distancing.” But staying put is a luxury for many rent-paying small business owners and workers who can’t afford to take time off.

The coronavirus cost Shin Hye-ryong, who runs two cafes in Suwon and Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, nearly half of his regular revenue last month.

He said he suffered a sharp drop in customer turnout since the outbreak’s onset in late January, and in addition to the combined rent of 5 million won ($4,193) a month, virus-related expenditures such as those spent on disinfection have added to his financial woes.

The cafe owner said he has come to accept the risk of an infection occurring at his shops, as the nature of his business entails people eating and drinking in a closed space.

“I can’t afford to take a break -- as much as I’d like to -- because of the monthly bills. And letting go staffers is something I wouldn’t consider unless things came to the absolute worst,” he said. Instead, he said he would take a whole day off per week just for cleaning and disinfecting.

Failing to follow through with social distancing at workplaces comes at the expense of worker safety.

Seoul’s biggest-yet cluster of cases reported on Monday was at a call center in Guro, where at least 77 workers at a call center were found to be infected.

“From a public health perspective, we have to start discussing how to protect people whose circumstances don’t allow them to stay home, even at the outbreak’s peak,” said the director of the National Medical Center’s Center for Infectious Diseases, Shin Hyoung-shik.

“These are the people who are naturally at higher risk of exposure,” he said, which is why the economically active should be given testing priority next to the elderly, the immunocompromised and health care workers.

And infection clusters such as that witnessed among the call center workers are bound to recur, according to Lee Jae-gap, who is widely cited as one of the country’s top infectious disease experts.

“This is not a ‘what if’ scenario. Cases will continue to emerge at random, and tracing the contacts will be overwhelming,” Lee said.

Although new figures over the weekend suggested a fall in the rate of spread, complacency could be dangerous, according to preventive medicine specialist Choi Jae-wook of Korea University Hospital.

“The recent decline in the daily tally of new infections may belie the severity of the outbreak in the whole picture,” he said. “The downward trend has more to do with the virus testing program mainly targeting those with ties to Shincheonji or Daegu, leaving other potential patients untested.”

While Italy’s example of nationwide movement restrictions was “not applicable to the state of things in Seoul,” Choi said office workers and those who spend much time indoors in the company of other people were at peril of contagion, and advised to keep face masks on.

Despite the government’s promotion of a flexible work culture to combat the virus, many workers still face difficulty taking sick leave, on top of commuting to and from work without protection.

A 25-year-old woman working at a media company in Yeongdeungpo, southern Seoul, said she was told to come into work the day after one of the staff was confirmed to have the virus.

“I don’t know if it’s safe to go back to work when someone in the office was found infected, but I guess I don’t have a choice,” she said.

Asked if wearing a face mask was required at work, she said that many of her colleagues gave up on wearing masks at the office or during their commutes as they were hard to get hold of.

“I’m lucky I live close by, but some of us travel from outside the city through public transit,” she said. 

In a Monday briefing, health officials identified the nonuse of face masks as one explanation for the large-scale transmission at the call center.

Calling in sick is “frowned upon” where he works, said another Seoulite, 29, who works in marketing.

“One of the staffers who is having cold symptoms hasn’t told the managers yet because he is afraid of getting penalized for it,” he said. “I can only hope the coronavirus isn’t what he has.”

A Ministry of Labor official said the government recommends telecommuting or wearing a face mask while working indoors to limit contagion in the workplace, for as long as the alert status is maintained at the highest level.

But these recommendations can’t be enforced, he said, and whether to implement them was up to individual employers.

Infectious disease professor Lee said the epidemic becoming protracted was “a given” at this point, and that more still needed to join in on reducing nonessential contacts.

“Social distancing won’t work unless we’re all doing it -- economic consequences may be sacrifices we have to make,” he said.

By Kim Arin (arin@heraldcorp.com)