No MERS deaths for two days
By Jung Min-ho
No new deaths from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) have occurred in the past two days, an indication that the outbreak of the deadly virus may be easing.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare reported four new cases of MERS Wednesday, raising the total number of people diagnosed with the illness to 179. The death toll has remained at 27 since Monday.
Two of the new patients were confirmed to have contracted MERS while quarantined at hospitals. The ministry is still looking into how the other two patients were infected.
In one of the new cases, a 50-year-old woman was infected while staying in the emergency room of Samsung Medical Center in Seoul a month ago when the country’s 14th patient visited there and spread the virus to more than 80 others.
Another patient, a 51-year-old man, contracted MERS when he shared the same ward with the 76th patient at Konkuk University Medical Center in Seoul early this month.
This case is expected to cause further controversy over the incubation period of the disease, which experts say is up to 14 days, because he was diagnosed with the virus 10 days after that period had passed.
A 29-year-old male patient also contracted the disease after 14 days. Epidemiologists are trying to figure out when and where he got infected with the virus. For now, the ministry just suspects that his father, who was the 175th patient, was the source of infection.
The latest patient is a nurse, 54, who works at a hospital in Gangneung, Gangwon Province. The ministry believes she contracted the virus while treating three MERS patients there.
Meanwhile, the number of people in isolation for possible infection was 3,103, up from 2,805 the previous day, marking the first daily rise in six days.
With 13 people newly discharged from hospitals, the number of full recoveries from MERS has risen to 67.
“We urge all suspected patients to follow the instructions of the ministry and hospitals,” said Kwon Duk-cheol, who leads the government’s MERS response team, in a press briefing.
He noted the team has decided to extend Samsung Medical Center’s partial shutdown indefinitely. Initially, this was scheduled to end Wednesday.
He said Konkuk University Medical Center has also been partially closed because two MERS patients had been admitted there.
Since the country reported its first MERS case on May 20, over 14,000 people have been subject to quarantine with 11,210 released from isolation after showing no symptoms of the disease for over two weeks.