Hong Kong upgraded to “serious” yesterday its response to an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in South Korea, where the number of cases jumped and fears grew about the economic impact of the disease.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye said the progress of MERS, which has been spreading in South Korea since last month when a businessman brought it home from a Middle East trip, had to be halted, a day after authorities began using mobile phones to trace people who violate quarantine.
With a surge in the number of cases to 87 from 44 the previous day, South Korea has the second highest number of infections after Saudi Arabia, according to data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
An 80-year-old man became South Korea’s sixth fatality of a disease that first appeared in the Middle East in 2012. Most of the disease’s approximately 445 fatalities have been in the Middle East but memories are fresh in Asia of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which emerged in 2002-2003 and killed about 800 people worldwide.
MERS is caused by a coronavirus from the same family as the one that caused SARS.
Malaysia has advised its nationals to avoid South Korea while Singapore has postponed or cancelled school trips. In China, airports stepped up monitoring and authorities have asked airlines to report any passengers with high temperatures. Vietnam and Cambodia ordered heightened screening of arrivals from South Korea.