With a previous count of 41, nine additional people have been confirmed to have been infected with MERS as of June 6th, reports Korea Herald.
According to the Health Ministry, five out of the nine people recently diagnosed with MERS were infected after visiting the Samsung Medical Center where a doctor, only known as “A,” was also confirmed to have MERS. Three people, including a medical staff, are from the Saint Mary Hospital in Pyongtaek where the first case originated.
Previously, the names of hospitals containing infected MERS patients were not revealed to the public. However, after Seoul’s mayor Park Won Soon complained about authorities’s lax disease management at a recently held midnight press conference, he revealed he will personally take charge of the MERS efforts in the city, writes Korea Herald.
Following this, Mayor Park Won Soon confirmed that doctor “A,” who came into contact with over 1,500 over the weekend despite showing symptoms and before getting officially diagnosed with MERS, was from the Samsung Medical Center.
The Health Ministry further confirms that the current MERS virus that is spreading in South Korea is not a mutation from the original virus found in the Middle East, revealing that a sample from a South Korean patient had a 99.55% similarity to a Saudi Arabian sample stored by U.S National Institute of Health in 2012.
The current count of MERS confirmed cases are now 50 with four casualties.
Source: Korea Herald
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