Gov't MERS website substandard

The overseas outbreak section on the government's MERS website launched Wednesday. It has failed to update the section despite updated data from the ECDC, Thursday. / Captured from website

By Kim Bo-eun

If the government has not been bashed enough over how it is dealing with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), the belated MERS website that opened Wednesday is already outdated.

The number of deaths and patients in Korea as of 11 a.m. on June 11 on www.mers.go.kr appears correctly on the home page as nine and 122.

But data in the overseas outbreak section _ sourced from the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) _ remains at that of June 5, despite the release of updated information Thursday.

According to the section, Korea has 40 patients, four of whom have died.

Seoul Metropolitan Government’s MERS site, co-created with interactive content media Visual Dive at issue.visualdive.co.kr/mers, provides the latest data from the ECDC.

Overall, the latter is easier to read and get information on the respiratory disease _ such as the timeline of its spread by hospital and details of patients.

Both sites, however, are unavailable in English.

Meanwhile, an English-language hotline for MERS is yet to be launched.