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 "All of a sudden, I can't leave. I can't move. If I get out of here,
I'll be nabbed by the police or traced via my cellphone," one
resident of the cut-off village of Jangduk said by phone.
About 2,500 South Koreans who may have had contact with MERS
patients are under quarantine, some in hospitals but most at home,
and the government is tracking cellphones to stop people from
violating the order.
One woman under quarantine was tracked to a golf course when she
went missing, and was asked to go home, an official said.
The woman, a resident of Seoul’s Gangnam District, stopped answering
her phone, and health officials went to her house to check where she
was. When she didn't answer the door, they called the police, who
tracked her via her mobile phone to a golf course hundreds of
kilometers (miles) away, an official at Gangnam Community Health
Centre said.
A total of 87 people in the country have been diagnosed with MERS,
and six have died, in the biggest outbreak of the virus outside
Saudi Arabia. All of the infections have taken place in healthcare
facilities after a man returned from a business trip to the Middle
East early last month, and the World Health Organization (WHO) has
said there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission.
Men in white protective clothing are guarding the entry roads to
Jangduk village, 280 km (172 miles) south of Seoul in North Jeolla
province, an area famous for its spicy red pepper paste.
"We are not in the middle of war, and didn't get any advance
notice," said the Jangduk resident, who declined to be named.
The only contact the villagers have with outsiders is twice-daily
visits from health officials checking their temperatures. The
Ministry of Public Safety and Security said on Monday it will
provide food and other necessities to the villagers.
The small agricultural settlement was placed under quarantine late
on Thursday when a 72-year-old resident was diagnosed with MERS. She
had fallen ill after she returned from a stay at a hospital in
Pyeongtaek city that is at the center of the outbreak.
"She got the okay from her doctor to leave the hospital on May 21
... she just went home, because that's where she lives," the woman's
son told Reuters by telephone.
A county official said the entire village of 105 people had been
quarantined because the woman had visited several neighbors there.
[to top of second column] |
BASEBALL AND BIBLES
With nearly 2,000 schools closed on Monday, some mothers stayed home
from work to look after their children.
Attendance at Sunday's professional baseball games in South Korea
averaged 8,693, down more than a third from the Sunday average this
season of 13,376. Movie ticket sales for June 5-7 were down 35
percent from two weeks earlier, the Korean Film Council said.
Some of Seoul's large churches canceled bible study classes, with
fewer worshippers attending Sunday services. One major church in the
Gangnam district, near a hospital where the second-largest number of
MERS infections occurred, advised parishioners to greet each other
with a bow, not a handshake.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism sought to reassure
nervous tourists by providing hotels, restaurants, shopping centers
and tour buses with hand sanitizers.
Visitor numbers at Pony Valley on the resort island of Jeju were
down even though its 24 camels had all "tested negative for MERS," a
representative of the tourist attraction said.
Scientists are not sure of the origin of the MERS virus, but several
studies have linked it to camels, and some experts think it is being
passed to humans through close physical contact with camels or
through the consumption of camel meat or camel milk.
"The camels have been quarantined since June 5 and our camel
trekking service hasn't resumed yet because people are still afraid
of MERS," the person said, declining to be named.
(Additional reporting by Seungyun Oh, Sohee Kim, Hooyeon Kim,
Hyunyoung Yi and Jack Kim; Editing by Tony Munroe and Raju
Gopalakrishnan)
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