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 Five new cases were reported by the Health Ministry on Monday,
taking the total to 150, the largest outbreak outside of Saudi
Arabia. The ministry also said another patient infected with the
MERS virus had become the 16th fatality.
But the number of new cases was sharply lower than daily rises that
reached as high as 23 last week. The World Health Organization (WHO)
said on Saturday the decline suggested that control measures were
working.
First identified in humans in 2012, MERS is caused by a coronavirus
from the same family as the one that triggered China's deadly 2003
outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). There is no
cure or vaccine.
A hospital in Daejeon, 140 km (87 miles) south of Seoul, stopped
taking all new patients on Monday as a precaution after a nurse
there was among those diagnosed with the virus, the fifth hospital
to have shut down completely or in part.
All of the cases in what the WHO called a "large and complex"
outbreak have been traced to healthcare facilities.
At least 440 schools remained closed on Monday, compared with the
2,900 that were shut on Friday.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye, whose approval rating has been
battered over the government's response to MERS, urged people to
return to normal.
"I ask the business community, too, to continue to go on with
investment, production and management activities as normal and
particularly help with ensuring that consumers don't hold back from
spending money," she told senior aides.
The Health Ministry said it would quarantine or put under
observation about 4,000 people who may have been exposed to MERS at
a prominent Seoul hospital, the Samsung Medical Center, which has
suspended most services.
But many in that group are among the 5,216 already under quarantine,
most of them at home and some in hospitals.
INCUBATION PERIOD
The Samsung hospital said on Sunday it was suspending all
non-emergency surgery and would take no new patients after more than
70 cases were traced to it, including a worker who was found to have
been in contact with more than 200 people.
Deputy Prime Minister Choi Kyung-hwan told parliament that the next
two days would be a watershed period for the outbreak, as the
two-week incubation period for the initial wave of cases traced to
the Samsung hospital comes to an end.
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Choi, who is also the finance minister, said the government was
considering a possible supplementary budget to bolster the economy,
Asia's fourth-biggest.
At Myoungin Elementary School in the city of Suwon, south of Seoul,
teachers greeted students at the gate for the first time in 10 days,
taking temperatures and sending home anyone with a fever.
The WHO last week recommended schools be reopened, saying they have
not been linked to transmission of the virus in South Korea or
elsewhere.
"The child's mother and I both work, so I think it's better for kids
to be in school where there can be proper measures, rather than
keeping them home," said Bin Ko-ok, who brought her first-grader
grandchild to school.
South Korea said more than 110,000 group tourists had called off
visits since the start of the outbreak, and forecast that from June
through August 820,000 fewer people would visit, at a cost of $900
million in lost potential revenue.
The trend is expected to continue through the summer, the culture
ministry said. Chinese airlines were cutting back flight to South
Korea, Xinhua news agency reported.
South Korea's largest hypermarket chain, E-Mart Co Ltd, said online
sales between June 1-11 had risen 63 percent year-on-year, as people
avoided stores, while No.2 Homeplus's online sales between June 1-14
rose 50 percent.
(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park, Hooyeon Kim, Park Minwoo and
Christine Kim; Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by Nick Macfie and Tony
Munroe)
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