Incheon Airport to roll out rapid coronavirus tests

Passengers go through the check-in process at Incheon Airport‘s Terminal 1. Yonhap via The Korea Herald/Asia News Network

SEOUL — Incheon Airport will roll out speedy coronavirus tests from next month, cutting down the process from seven hours to two or four hours.

The new loop-mediated isothermal amplification — or LAMP-type — rapid PCR tests, which have been approved by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, can take as little as two hours to show the result and have been recommended for passengers with no symptoms traveling abroad, the Incheon International Airport Corp. said Tuesday.

Negative results from rapid PCR tests are accepted by many countries excluding a select few, such as China and Thailand as of Monday, the public corporation said.

From next month, the airport’s testing center will also oversee regular PCR tests themselves from March 1 with the help of Inha University Hospital, which has been helping with building the infrastructure, rolling out equipment and training staff.

Under the new move, regular PCR testing will take four hours as opposed to the conventional seven hours, the IIAC said.

The IIAC also plans to introduce a smart quarantine app for passengers at Incheon Airport as well as kiosks to print out negative coronavirus results as part of their efforts to improve convenience at the airport.

“We plan to preemptively build smart quarantine platform infrastructure at Incheon Airport such as introducing thermal screening kiosks as well as quarantine and disinfection robots to become the airport that puts safety before anything else during the post-coronavirus era,” said Kim Kyung-wook, the newly appointed president of the state-run IIAC.

The reservation-only testing center is located on the basement floor of Terminal 2 and opens at 9 a.m. and closes at 6 p.m. every day throughout the year.