By Kim Hyun-bin
How a Korean man visiting Kuwait contracted Korean Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is puzzling because the health authorities of Kuwait said the infection was unlikely to have originated there.
Mustafa Redha, undersecretary for Kuwait's Ministry of Health, said Wednesday local time that all 10 people who had had close contact with the confirmed Korean MERS patient tested negative for the virus.
“We have taken all measures needed to ensure the safety of citizens and expats against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome,” Redha said in a press conference.
According to local Kuwait media, the press conference was held after a report issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) that a Korean had contracted the MERS virus during his visit there.
Upon the report, the Korean ministry raised the level of alert to contain any possible cases of the disease. It also took samples from people who had close contact with the patient, including his colleagues, drivers and medical staffers at a local hospital he visited, and the results came out negative.
Kuwait has not had a MERS case since August 2016.
The 61-year-old man had flown to Kuwait for business on Aug. 16 and visited a Kuwait hospital twice after showing symptoms of stomach pain and diarrhea.
He arrived in Korea, Sept. 7, following a transfer in Dubai and was confirmed to have the virus the next day. So Korean health authorities suspected he contracted the disease in Kuwait because the transfer in Dubai took less than three hours and he had not visited any other country.
The Kuwait authorities asked the WHO to send personnel to confirm its test results. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) also plan to send two experts there.
The man had contact with over 400 people including other passengers, and among them, 21 people had close contact such as flight attendants, passengers in nearby seats, immigration officials and medical staffs at the emergency room of Samsung Medical Center where he rushed to upon arrival at Incheon International Airport. They are being monitored and have to report their condition to quarantine authorities every day, according to the KCDC.
The median incubation period for MERS with limited human-to-human transmission is approximately five days. However, the longest incubation period recorded by the KCDC was 14 days.
No additional confirmed cases have been reported here.
MERS is a coronavirus respiratory disease with a fatality rate of up to 36 percent, contracted through contact with infected camels and spread through close person-to-person contact.
Korea was hit with an outbreak in 2015, causing 38 deaths and infecting 186 people. The first MERS case was in Saudi Arabia, and it has spread to other countries. As of June, the WHO has reported 2,229 confirmed cases worldwide.