South Korea on Saturday confirmed nine more cases of the virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), but said it did not represent a spread of the outbreak as the infected were already in quarantine. The additional cases brought the total number of people infected with the virus to 50.
The outbreak first reported on May 20 has claimed four lives and stirred public fear as the government was blamed for an ineffective initial response that allowed one man who had returned from Saudi Arabia to infect more than half the rest.
All nine new cases were traced to the initial patient, the health ministry said, calling them health care associated infections. But the ministry said tests showed no sign of mutation in the virus that has affected the South Korean patients, with its genetic traits "almost identical" to the one that was found in the Middle East outbreak.
There has been no sustained human-to-human transmission, but the worst case scenario is the virus changes and spreads rapidly, as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) did in 2002-2003 killing about 800 people around the world.
MERS was first identified in humans in 2012 and is caused by a coronavirus from the same family as the one that triggered SARS. But MERS has a much higher death rate at 38 percent, according to World Health Organization (WHO) figures.
South Korea's new cases bring the total number globally to about 1,194, based on WHO data, with at least 443 related deaths.
Meanwhile, Kwon Joon-wook, a senior official of the ministry, told journalists Saturday the 68-year-old man who was the first case, and his wife who contracted the virus from him, have both been cured and were released from hospital Friday. Two others were also waiting to be released, he said.
Consequently, more than 1,660 people who may have been exposed to the virus have been placed under varying levels of quarantine. The outbreak has forced hundreds of schools to shut their gates, thousands of people to cancel travel plans and dealt a blow to many businesses as people were told to avoid large crowds.
White South Korea is far from being in a state of panic, the number of face masks sold in pharmacies is said to have dramatically increased over the past week.
"This weekend will be critical. The incubation period for primary and secondary patients ends this weekend. If there is no further infection, then we can say we have stemmed the main tide," said Choi Jae-wook, an official at the Korean Medical Association. "But if there are more cases, we will have to prepare for tertiary and fourth generation infections — and the spread into the local community."
The WHO said Friday it would send a team of experts to South Korea for a joint mission with the government in collecting information of the outbreak. The team is expected to arrive here as early as next week, the ministry said. The WHO has said it expects more infections in South Korea, while stressing there was currently "no evidence of sustained transmission in the community."
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