South Korea reported a jump in new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, reversing 11 days of slowing infections, as authorities tested hundreds of staff at a Seoul call center where the disease broke out this week. Another 242 new cases were reported, compared with 35 a day earlier, bringing the total to 7,755 in Asia’s worst outbreak outside mainland China, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said. The daily tally of new cases in South Korea peaked at 909 on Feb. 29, as authorities tested about 200,000 followers of a fringe Christian church at the center of the nation’s epidemic.
