SEOUL – South Korea has sealed off two hospitals that treated people with a deadly respiratory disease, officials said, even as the outbreak that has been spreading through health facilities could have peaked, with just four new cases yesterday.
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome has infected 126 people in South Korea and killed 11 since it was first diagnosed just over three weeks ago in a businessman who had returned from a trip to the Middle East.
The outbreak is the largest outside Saudi Arabia, where the disease was first identified in humans in 2012, and has stirred fears in Asia of a repeat of a 2002-03 scare when Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) killed about 800 people worldwide.
The danger of the virus in hospitals had led to two being sealed off with at least 133 people – patients and staff – inside. They would be sealed for at least the next 11 days, given the incubation period of the virus, officials said.
“No patients can get out of their rooms,” said a city government official in the capital, Seoul, where one of the hospitals is located, declining to be identified.
“Nurses in protective gear are giving them food. No one can get in from outside.”
However, there are several other hospitals where additional cases were later reported or MERS patients were treated. Their incubation periods have not ended, raising worries that they may become new sources of infections.
Two of the hospitals, Mediheal Hospital in western Seoul and Changwon SK Hospital in the southern city of Changwon, were ordered Thursday to temporarily shutdown after MERS patients were found to have contacted hundreds of people there before they tested positive for the virus, according to officials at Seoul and Changwon./AP