Four more MERS cases lift South Korea’s total to 154
Lisa Schnirring
CIDRAP News
Jun 16, 2015
Health officials in South Korea today announced 4 more MERS-CoV infections, along with 3 more deaths, moving the overall total to 154 infections, as a World Health Organization (WHO) emergency committee meets to assess new developments.
Three of the four latest MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) patients were infected at Samsung Medical Center in Seoul, the outbreak’s biggest hot spot, Yonhap News Service reported. The hospital is the source of 75 infections, roughly half of the total.
Details on latest infections, deaths
One of the newly confirmed patients is a man who went with his mother to the hospital’s emergency department (ED), along with his sister, the Korea Times reported. He reportedly wasn’t on the government’s contact list, though his sister was diagnosed as having a MERS-CoV infection on Jun 10.
The man worked at a community center in Daegu and was on the job until Jun 13, when he came down with a fever, which could have exposed people outside of healthcare settings to the disease. South Korea’s health ministry has placed 29 of the man’s contacts on home monitoring, according to the Times.
Another of the new cases involves a man who visited Samsung’s ED with his wife while she was treated at the facility. According to the Times, the man’s wife was on a contact list, but he wasn’t. His MERS-CoV infection wasn’t detected until he sought care at St, Mary’s Hospital in Seoul, more than a week after he first started having symptoms.
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