Hopefully the spread of MERS is contained so the people in Pyeongtaek can get back to normal lives. Fortunately the ROK Air Force servicemember who tested positive for MERS recently has recovered:
A truck emits disinfectant smoke around Saint Mary’s Hospital in Pyeongtaek on Wednesday. South Korea’s first MERS patient spent three days in the hospital, spreading the disease to at least 30 others. Photo: European Pressphoto Agency
PYEONGTAEK, South Korea—A city best known by many for its nearby U.S. military base and surrounding rice paddies became ground zero as a deadly virus rarely seen outside the Middle East began to spread through South Korea.
At St. Mary’s Hospital in a newly developing industrial area of Pyeongtaek, about 35 miles south of Seoul, doctors puzzled for three days in mid-May over the flulike condition of a 68-year-old man, who hadn’t disclosed at that point that he had recently returned from the Middle East.
The man left St. Mary’s and was later admitted to a larger hospital in Seoul, where he was ultimately diagnosed with Middle East respiratory syndrome and was quarantined. But during that time in St. Mary’s, the man spread the MERS virus to more than 30 people. (…………………………)
A South Korean Defense Ministry official said one Korean man stationed at the Osan Air Base near Pyeongtaek who tested positive for MERS would be released on Thursday. The air base is close to the main U.S. military base of Camp Humphreys for which Pyeongtaek is known.
St. Mary’s was the first hospital named by the government as being part of the MERS outbreak. All patients, including MERS sufferers, have been moved to other hospitals. [Wall Street Journal via reader tip]
You can read more at the link, but it is going to be interesting to learn why MERS spread so widely in various hospitals as well as why so few people have died compared to outbreaks in the Middle East.
