The WHO yesterday said that South Korea’s outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) was “large and complex” and more cases should be anticipated, but there is no sign the disease is spreading in the community.
There was also no indication that the MERS virus in South Korea had mutated to make it more transmissible, WHO Assistant Director-General Keiji Fukuda told a news conference at the South Korean Health Ministry in Sejong, south of Seoul.
The virus has infected 138 people in South Korea and killed 14 of them since it was first diagnosed on May 20 in a businessman who had returned from a trip to the Middle East.
The outbreak is the largest outside Saudi Arabia, where the disease was first identified in humans in 2012, and has stirred fears in Asia of a repeat of a 2002-to-2003 scare when SARS killed about 800 people worldwide.
“Because the outbreak has been large and is complex, more cases should be anticipated,” said Fukuda, who is leading a WHO team that is conducted a joint review with South Korean officials of the country’s response to the outbreak.
He said he was encouraged that South Korea’s control measures were having an impact.
The businessman who brought MERS back to South Korea visited several health centers for a cough and fever before he was diagnosed, leaving a trail of infection in his wake.
All of South Korea’s cases have been linked to health facilities.
Fukuda cited crowded emergency units and wards, together with the custom of friends and family visiting patients as aggravating a less than optimal initial response to an unfamiliar infection.
A tendency for sick people to visit more than one health facility, as the businessman did, was also likely to have been a factor, he said.
“The practice of seeking care at many different medical facilities, so-called ‘doctor shopping,’ may have been a contributing factor,” he said.
However, the spread was confined to hospitals.
“At present, the mission has found no evidence to indicate there is an ongoing transmission in the community,” Fukuda said.
Authorities have sealed off at least two hospitals and about 4,000 people are in quarantine, either at home or in medical facilities. Quarantine has been widened to isolate anyone who may have come into contact with a MERS patient.
The 12 new cases reported yesterday included an ambulance driver who transported an infected person.
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