Patient Zero for MERS Outbreak in Korea Identified, Over 900 Schools Close

South Korean authorities have identified the man who first brought MERS to Korea after traveling to the Middle East:

The World Health Organization warned that the MERS outbreak in South Korea is likely to grow, as the number of people under quarantine crept up to 1,369 on Wednesday.

The Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed five new cases — increasing the number of people with the disease to 35. These new cases were contracted within hospitals.

So far, three people have died after contracting the respiratory virus in South Korea, the country’s Health Ministry said Thursday, in the largest MERS outbreak outside Saudi Arabia.

The first case, concerning a man who returned to South Korea after traveling to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Bahrain, was reported on May 20. The person had not been ill during his travels, according to the World Health Organization.

More than 900 schools have shut to prevent the spread of the virus, according to South Korea’s education ministry.   [CNN]

You can read more at the link, but the Park Guen-hye government is taking a lot of criticism for not reacting better to the initial outbreak.  I don’t see how the government is to blame for a lack of a hospital not taking the first case seriously from the start.  It seems that once the virus spread the government formed a task force to begin to take measures to stop the spread, but the initial poor handling from the hospital is what is really to blame. However that is the way it goes in Korea where the President tends to get blamed for everything that goes wrong.  It will be interesting to see if the Korean left tries to capitalize on this politically?

Also of interest is that South Korea has closed over 900 schools while us military schools remain open.  It will be interesting to see how long the US military schools remain open if there is any more spread of the virus on Osan AB for example.