MERS Outbreak in Seoul, South Korea

While only 30 people have been confirmed to be infected with MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), with 2 dead, South Korea has approximately 2,300 people in quarantine and 1,300 schools closed. Seoul police will enforce the quarantines and the Mayor may ask for city-wide self-quarantining. While human-to-human transmission is being seen, it is still not infectious enough to be considered a community-associated disease. To go pandemic, MERS would need to mutate so that it could spread easily between humans in the wider community.

The Korean outbreak was started by a 68-year-old Korean doctor returning from a visit to 4 Middle Eastern countries. Before he was properly diagnosed, he spread the virus to health-care workers, family members, and other patients at 4 medical facilities where he was treated. He also had attended a large medical symposium and potentially exposed 1,500 people to the virus. Currently South Korea is tracing all quarantined contacts of those infected and are monitoring them for the maximum incubation period of the disease (2 weeks). All new MERS cases have only been among those contacts, adding to confidence that the outbreak is under control.

Read the full Nature article HERE.

Read the full CNN article HERE.

Butler, D. (June 5, 2015). South Korean MERS outbreak is not a global threat. Nature News. doi:10.1038/nature.2015.17709