Death toll from MERS rises to 16 in S Korea
South Korea’s Health Ministry has announced the death of one more person from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which has so far infected dozens of people in the Asian country.
Also, five more people were reported to have been infected by MERS, according to new data released on Monday by Seoul.
The five new patients, aged from 39 to 84, were infected in hospitals in Soul and outside the capital in nearby metropolitan areas.
One of the new MERS patients was infected at the Samsung Medical Center, a major hospital and the epicenter of more than 70 cases in Seoul.
The hospital suspended its services on Sunday after criticism from the public and government over its failure to stem the spread of MERS among its patients and personnel.
Authorities also reported that 150 people have been infected since the outbreak in South Korea less than a month ago.
The latest person to die from the virus was a 58-year-old male senior citizen who had been infected by MERS earlier this month.
The death has brought the number of fatalities from the virus to 16 in South Korea alone.
MERS broke out in South Korea on May 20 when a man who returned from Saudi Arabia was diagnosed with the virus.
Ever since, MERS has spread so rapidly that it has sparked an alarm not only in South Korea, but in other Asian countries nearby.
In Saudi Arabia, where MERS was detected first, more than 950 people were infected by the virus and 412 others died from the infection.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for an emergency meeting on June 16 to discuss what it called the complex virus.
MERS, a cousin of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), causes coughing, fever, pneumonia and kidney failure but it does not appear to be as contagious as SARS, which killed some 800 people in a 2003 epidemic.
There is currently no vaccine or treatment for the disease, which spreads through close contact with infected people, but is not airborne.
Over 5,000 people are being quarantined by authorities in South Korea.
HDS/NN/HRB
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