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 Thailand said on Thursday a 75-year-old businessman from Oman, who
had traveled to Bangkok for medical treatment for a heart condition,
had tested positive for MERS.
The announcement came just as an outbreak in South Korea that began
last month and has infected 166 people, killing 24 of them, appeared
to be leveling off.
The high-end Bumrungrad Hospital, run by Thailand's second-largest
hospital operator, identified the first MERS case. The hospital in
central Bangkok treats over a million patients a year, about half of
them foreigners.
"The patient came to us tired, coughing ... there was no fever," a
doctor from the private hospital told a televised news conference.
"So we X-rayed his chest ... we found that he could have two things,
a heart condition or the MERS virus."
Tourism accounts for 10 percent of the Thai economy and medical
tourists make up more than 10 percent of visitors, according to the
Tourism Authority of Thailand. About a third of those medical
tourists come from the Middle East.
The hospital said 58 staff had been quarantined, but all other
operations were continuing as normal.
The infected man was moved to Bangkok's Bamrasnaradura Infectious
Diseases Institute on Thursday. Staff there were seen wearing and
giving out masks to visitors, according to a Reuters reporter at the
scene. Health warnings were posted in front of the building's
entrance.
Two South Korean hospitals were locked down and another completely
shut due to MERS, while the prestigious Samsung Medical Center in
Seoul, where most infections occurred, stopped taking new patients
during the outbreak.
The Thai case will compound fears in Asia of a repeat of a 2002-2003
outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which began in
China and killed about 800 people globally.
MERS was first identified in humans in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and the
majority of cases have been in the Middle East.
Isolated cases have cropped up in Asia before South Korea's outbreak
began last month, and Thailand is the fourth Asian country to
register a case.
China has had one case recently, that of a South Korean man who
traveled to China via Hong Kong despite authorities suggesting he
stay in voluntary quarantine at home. The Philippines has also
identified a case this year.
CONCERN FOR VICTIM'S SONS
The infected man arrived in the Thai capital on Monday on an Oman
Air flight for medical treatment for a heart ailment at a private
hospital.
"It took about four days to diagnose this case and two lab tests,"
Public Health Minister Rajata Rajatanavin told Reuters, adding all
106 people on board the man's flight had been located.
Among those being monitored were the man's two sons, who were
considered at high risk because of their proximity to their father.
The two had been tested and results were due later on Friday, Rajata
said.
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Most of those under observation had been told to stay at home for 14
days.
South Korea's outbreak, the largest outside Saudi Arabia, had been
traced to a 68-year-old man who returned from a business trip to the
Middle East in early May.
It spread through hospitals with all of its infections known to have
occurred in healthcare facilities.
The outbreak in South Korea appeared to have peaked, with just one
new case reported on Friday and the number of people in quarantine
down 12 percent to 5,930, though authorities were taking no chances.
"Given the current developments, we have judged that it has leveled
off, but we need to watch further spread, further cases from
so-called intensive control hospitals," the South Korean health
ministry's chief policy official, Kwan Deok-cheol, told a briefing
in Seoul.
In Thailand, authorities were screening passengers from countries
seen at risk of MERS and stepping up public information about the
virus, another health official said.
The Middle East is an important source of tourists for Thailand with
arrivals from the region up by nearly 50 percent in January,
according to the tourism office.
Bangkok is also one of the region's main aviation hubs.
The vast majority of MERS infections have been in Saudi Arabia,
where more than 1,000 people have been infected since 2012, and
about 454 have died. There is no cure.
Shares in Thai aviation companies and hotels fell on Friday with
hotel operator Central Plaza Hotel plunging 6.6 percent. Airports
operator Airports of Thailand dropped 4.2 percent to a more than
three-week low. Bumrungrad Hospital shares were down over 6 percent.
(Additional reporting by Pracha Hariraksapitak and Jutarat
Skulpichetrat, Ju-min Park and Tony Munroe in SEOUL; Editing by
Robert Birsel and Jeremy Laurence)
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