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| Health workers disinfect seats at Eagles Park, the home ground of professional baseball team Hanwha Eagles, in Daejeon, Monday. / Yonhap |
MERS death toll rises to 16; confirmed cases to 150
By Kim Rahn
At least 12 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) patients were allowed to travel freely and make contact with other people because the government failed to count them during the initial stages of the outbreak, according to the health authorities, Monday.
These unchecked patients may have been "super spreaders." They contracted the virus after contact with other patients, but were not included on the government's monitoring list before being diagnosed with the disease.
One of them is a medical staffer at Samsung Medical Center (SMC) in southern Seoul, a new epicenter of the disease. He was in charge of taking patients from the emergency room to diagnostic facilities or wards.
The unidentified staffer was not isolated, although the nation's 14th patient was diagnosed with MERS on May 30 after visiting the emergency room there. He showed MERS symptoms including a fever from June 2, but kept working through June 10 before being confirmed, thus contacting nearly 400 people at the hospital.
Another man, who had contracted the disease while visiting Dae Cheong Hospital in Daejeon, where the 16th patient stayed, visited four other clinics in Busan before being diagnosed with MERS. The government suspects he had contact with around 780 people, including colleagues and clinic staffers.
Several others have similar patterns ― contacting confirmed or suspected patients, but moving around freely even after showing symptoms and not falling under government monitoring, before being confirmed later.
It was also found that one of previously confirmed patients was a doctor at SMC. The government did not say whether he was isolated immediately after the 14th patient was confirmed or kept treating other patients. Two other doctors at the hospital have contracted the disease.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare confirmed five more cases Monday, raising the total to 150. Four of them contracted the disease while staying at hospitals that other confirmed patients visited, while the other is a Konyang University Hospital nurse who was infected after doing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a MERS patient who eventually died.
Two more patients ― men aged 58 and 61 ― died, putting total deaths at 16.
A total of 14 people have recovered and been released from quarantine facilities, including four who were released Monday.
The ministry said 5,216 people have been isolated at quarantine facilities or in their homes. It added that 4,075 people have been isolated or are under monitoring due to their possible contact with MERS patients at SMC, without detailing how many of them were represented in both numbers.
"Some of them may overlap. We think the total figure may be around 10,000," a ministry official said.
To deal with the cases and monitoring at SMC, the ministry formed a joint team of 24 government officials and experts from the private sector. The team is in charge of epidemiologic investigation and preventive measures at the hospital, and will decide when to lift the temporary service suspension ― the hospital said Sunday it would suspend some of its services.
Some other hospitals also temporarily closed their emergency rooms after finding out that MERS patients had visited them.
In the meantime, the government will conduct a fourth test on an elementary schoolboy in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, who earlier tested positive.
His test results kept changing, from negative to positive and then negative again.
Since his father was diagnosed with MERS on June 9, the 7-year-old boy has also been isolated. The government said he has yet to show any symptoms of the disease.
