The hospital at the epicenter of South Korea’s deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak started to resume normal operations yesterday, as officials moved closer to declaring a formal end to a crisis that triggered widespread panic and choked the local economy.
The past two weeks have seen no new reported cases of MERS, which killed 36 people in South Korea since the first case — diagnosed on May 20 — developed into the largest outbreak of the virus outside Saudi Arabia.
Of the total 186 reported cases, nearly half were diagnosed at the Samsung Medical Center in southern Seoul — one of the top hospitals in the country.
The outbreak at the facility, which belongs to South Korea’s giant family-run Samsung conglomerate, prompted the company’s heir apparent, Jay Y. Lee, to publicly apologize last month for “causing great pain and concern.”
Among those infected were 13 medical staff. Administrators partially shut down the center on June 14 to focus exclusively on dealing with MERS patients.
However, with the outbreak effectively over, the hospital yesterday announced that it had begun a “step-by-step resumption of services” for existing patients.
Treatment for new patients and emergency room services will be normalized early next month, it said on its Web site.
Health authorities initially withheld the names of facilities where the virus had been detected.
The secrecy was heavily criticized for prompting infected people to go “doctor shopping” — visiting different hospitals to obtain second or third opinions, furthering the spread of the virus.
The outbreak dealt a severe blow to businesses from tourism to retail, as people have shunned crowded venues and more than 120,000 foreigners canceled planned trips to Seoul.
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