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 He visited four health facilities seeking treatment and
inadvertently triggered the biggest outbreak of Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outside that region, and what is verging
on national panic at home.
President Park Geun-hye has said everything must be done to stop the
outbreak that has infected 34 other people as of Thursday, and
killed two of them in South Korea.
Hundreds of schools have locked their gates as the outbreak
rekindled fears of a similar coronavirus that caused Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome in 2002, and killed about 800 people as it
spread around the world.
The South Korean "index patient" was running a farm equipment
company in Bahrain, according to a South Korean official, and had
visited the region before returning on May 4.
More than half of South Korea's infections have been traced to a
hospital in Pyeongtaek city, 65 km (40 miles) southwest of Seoul,
where the man shared a room with another patient.
"The first patient was close to another person in the room and it
appears that more infections took place as he went out of the room
for checks, sneezing and coughing in the hall," said Kim Woo-joo, an
infectious disease specialist advising the government.
Others became infected at three of the four health facilities the
man visited, authorities said.
Officials have not identified the hospitals where MERS patients are
being treated, but the Pyeongtaek facility has been shut and staff
quarantined.
A nurse there said there was a lack of knowledge about the virus
when the man was hospitalized. Health officials have said hospital
staff had not been aware of the man's Middle East trip.
"There's little understanding. His visit to us was just unavoidable
exposure to other people in the hospital," the nurse, who is in
quarantine at home, said by telephone. She declined to be
identified.
When the man was admitted at another hospital, where he was finally
diagnosed, he at first only told staff he had visited Bahrain, which
is not considered a MERS danger zone, health officials said.
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In fact, the man had also been to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates, the countries with the most MERS cases and most of its
approximately 440 fatalities.
"We reported him to the disease control center but because he went
to Bahrain, which was all we knew at that time, his case dragged
on," said an official at the hospital where he was diagnosed on May
20, who also declined to be identified.
"Too much time was spent finding him positive."
The person the index patient shared a room with at the Pyeongtaek
hospital contracted MERS, as did that person's son, who had visited.
The son broke voluntary quarantine and traveled to Hong Kong and
mainland China, where he was diagnosed with MERS. He is in hospital
in China.
As of Wednesday, the index patient was on a respirator in a
government-designated hospital. His 63-year-old wife also contracted
the virus, but authorities said her condition had improved.
Authorities believe that other than the index patient, most of the
MERS infections in South Korea came from the health facilities the
index patient visited.
(Additional reporting by Meeyoung Cho; Editing by Tony Munroe,
Robert Birsel)
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