The New Heavenly sect group still held meetings in Wuhan until December, when there were rumors of the corona virus.

"Rumors of a virus started circulating in November, but no one paid any attention to it," said an anonymous 28-year-old kindergarten teacher, member of the New Heavenly Sect, today. "I was in Wuhan in December and as soon as the outbreak broke out, our church in Wuhan stopped all gatherings."

The female believer said most of the members went home to celebrate the Chinese New Year from the end of January, but they continued to listen to the sermon online.

The New Heavenly Sect has a total of about 250,000 followers, founded by Mr. Lee Man-hee, born in 1931 in Cheongdo District, North Gyeongsang Province, South Korea, founded in 1984. Mr. Lee claims to be the reincarnated God, primarily engaging followers at cafes and other churches.

According to Chinese sources, the country has about 20,000 people from the New Heavenly sect, most of which live in large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, Changchun and Shenyang.

The Hong Kong SCMP newspaper reported that there were about 200 followers of New Heavenly Land in Wuhan, Hubei Province, where the Covid-19 outbreak was started. An unnamed pastor in Hubei said the devotees were very religious, some even continued to preach while nCoV was spreading.

New Tianjin is currently involved in more than half of the nearly 1,000 cases of nCoV in Korea. However, the female pre-school teacher in Wuhan asserts that the epidemic in Korea is not related to the devotees in this city.

"I don't think nCoV is spreading from us, because no member in Wuhan is infected. I don't know about the members elsewhere, but at least we are healthy," she said. "There are so many Chinese people coming to Korea, it's unfair to blame us." However, this person ignored the question of whether someone in the cult had traveled from Wuhan to Korea after the outbreak.

"We know all the negative news out there after the virus outbreak in South Korea but didn't want to openly explain it because it would get us into trouble with the government. We want to overcome the crisis first." , the woman said, adding that Chinese police had raided a group of Tan Thien Dia believers in Wuhan in 2018.

South Korea currently records 977 cases of nCoV and 11 deaths, including a foreign national, the world's second largest Covid-19 outbreak after China.