Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light, though wise men at their end know dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning they, do not go gentle into that good night.
3 new MERS cases reported
By Jhoo Dong-chan
Three new cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) were confirmed on Sunday, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
This brought the total number of those infected to 169. On Saturday, no new cases were reported, the first such day since the initial outbreak on May 20.
Two of the three are medical staffers -- a radiology technician at Konkuk University Medical Center and a doctor at Samsung Medical Center in Seoul. They are believed to have become infected while treating MERS patients.
Meanwhile, one confirmed patient died on Saturday, bringing the total number of deaths to 25. The fatality rate here is at 14.8 percent as of Sunday.
The patient, 63, contracted the disease while visiting his wife, who is undergoing cancer treatment, on May 27 in Samsung Medical Center. He suffered from ischemic heart disease and diabetes before becoming infected with MERS, according to the ministry.
The number of people in isolation for possible contact with MERS patients decreased to 4,035 from 5,197 the previous day.
Forty-three people so far have been recovered from the disease and released from quarantine facilities.
Meanwhile, experts called for revisions to Korea’s epidemic prevention manuals, which they say do not properly reflect realities faced by medical teams.
Lee Jong-koo, director of Seoul National University’s JW Lee Center for Global Medicine, said that the government could have reduced a significant number of patients if it had properly tracked and managed those who possibly had contact with MERS patients in the initial phase.
He said the current manual defines the situation as “non-community infection” although the disease spread to people in various regions. The manual made the government not raise the alert level from “caution” to “warning.”
“By sticking to the manual, a pan-government response was not available at the beginning,” he said.
The government belatedly formed a pan-governmental control tower on June 4.
“The manual needs changes, so that pan-government countermeasures can be established in an initial stage of an epidemic although the government may not raise the alert level,” he said.
MERS was first found in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and spread to some 20 neighboring countries. Some 1,100 cases were reported throughout the world at the time, where the disease recorded over 40 percent of the fatality rate in Saudi Arabia.