Kim Rahn is the managing editor of The Korea Times. Since joining the company in 2003, she has covered various beats including the presidential office, Seoul city government, the Bank of Korea and the tourism industry. In 2014, she won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for her coverage of the ordeals of migrant women in Korea.
3 more MERS patients die
Staffers from the Korean Red Cross pack boxes with relief supplies for people who have been ordered to stay home due to possible Middle East Respiratory Syndrome infection, at the organization’s relief center in Seoul, Thursday. The supplies include instant noodles, rice and side dishes. / Yonhap
By Kim Rahn
By Kim Rahn
The Ministry of Health and Welfare said Thursday that three more people have died from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
The total number of deaths is now 23 producing a preliminary fatality rate of 13.9 percent. In Saudi Arabia where the virus was first found and more than 450 people died, the fatality rate was about 40 percent.
Among the three were a 69-year-old man who had tuberculosis and high blood pressure before becoming infected with MERS, and a 64-year-old man who suffered from high blood pressure, asthma and necrotizing pancreatitis, according to the health authorities.
The other was an 82-year-old woman, who contracted the disease at Konyang University Hospital in Daejeon while attending to her husband, who was also diagnosed with MERS before her and died on June 3.
This is the first time that a couple has died from the disease. When the husband died, his relatives couldn’t stay by his deathbed because they were ordered to stay at home for fear of possible infection.
Three new cases were also confirmed, bringing the number of those infected to 165.
One of them is a nurse at Asan Chungmu Hospital in South Chungcheong Province. She is believed to have been infected from a MERS patient, a police officer who stayed there. Another 10 nurses are showing MERS symptoms, so the ministry is conducting tests on them.
Another is a nurse at Samsung Medical Center, the new epicenter of the disease after the nation’s 14th patient visited there. She worked on wards where two confirmed patients stayed.
Besides the nurse, another Samsung medical staffer, a radiology technician, was diagnosed with MERS Wednesday. The ministry said he was exposed to four confirmed patients there while taking their X-rays.
As more and more medical staff at the hospital are diagnosed with the disease, the ministry decided to test all workers there. “We confirmed that staff had insufficient protective gear,” a ministry official said.
The government has been checking the health conditions of about 50,000 outpatients who visited the hospital during the periods of the 14th patient’s visit and the radiology technician’s duty hours.
The other new patient was confirmed at Kyung Hee University Hospital at Gangdong where he had kidney dialysis before MERS symptoms appeared. The ministry is monitoring 110 patients at the dialysis center who may have been exposed to him.
In the meantime, five more patients have recovered and released from quarantine facilities, including a doctor at Samsung Medical Center. A total of 24 have recovered from the disease.
A total of 6,729 people have been quarantined after possible contact with confirmed patients.
It was also belatedly found that a confirmed patient had a family trip to Jeju Island before being diagnosed. The man went to Jeju on June 5 and returned to Seoul on June 8, and began to show symptoms immediately after. He tested positive on June 13.
The regional health authority in Jeju ordered 31 workers at The Shilla Hotel there to stay at home as they had close contact with the patient. The hotel decided to shut down temporarily and moved all its guests to other hotels.
Meanwhile, the Sichuan provincial government in China urged its residents to avoid nonessential travel to Korea, saying the MERS epidemic in Korea is not showing signs of easing. Earlier Hong Kong also issued a “red alert” advisory over trips to Korea.