South Korea Isolating Hundreds Amid MERS Outbreak
South Korea reported two additional cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, or MERS, on Sunday.
The country is currently isolating nearly 700 people due to the outbreak, which started last month with a man returning to the Republic of Korea from Bahrain via Qatar, according to Reuters.
Eighteen patients have been identified since the first 68-year-old patient returned form the Middle East to Korea on May 20, said the World Health Organization.
Since that initial diagnosis, a 44-year-old Korean also broke a voluntary house quarantine, and traveled to Hong Kong and China, causing regional concerns.
“We must find the reason for the high rate of transmission unlike in the cases of other countries,” said South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Monday.
The WHO said 1,154 cases of MERS have been confirmed by laboratories – including 431 deaths worldwide.
MERS-CoV was first identified in Saudi Arabia in September 2012, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. All the cases have been linked to countries in and near the Arabian peninsula, health officials said.
The coronavirus is from the same disease group that caused the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, in China.
