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 Health authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong
said it was likely the disease would spread as the patient had taken
a bus, crossed a busy border checkpoint from Hong Kong and stayed in
a hotel before being taken to hospital.
"As we have said before, the possibility of MERS transferring into
Guangdong is very high," He Jianfeng, director for the Guangdong
Provincial Center for Disease Control, told reporters.
"In theory, it’s possible to have a second case."
He added, however, that 38 people found to have come into contact
with the patient hadn't tested positive.
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.
"The virus appears to be circulating widely throughout the Arabian
Peninsula," the World Health Organization (WHO) said on its website.
"All recent cases that have been reported outside the Middle East
first developed infection in the Middle East."
WHO said on Friday 10 people in South Korea were confirmed as having
MERS, but there had been no sustained human-to-human spread. The UN
agency said that it was not recommending screening of passengers or
that travel or trade restrictions be imposed on South Korea due to
the outbreak.
"The virus is not behaving differently. It is direct transmission
and not sustained human-to-human-transmission. They are all related
to the same case who came traveling from the Middle East," WHO
spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a briefing in Geneva.
The patient, in isolation in hospital in the southern Chinese city
of Huizhou, had a fever and a chest examination showed possible
pneumonia, China's National Health and Family Planning Commission
said.
"We understand he is currently in a stable condition, and is being
well cared for," the WHO China office said in a statement.
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The man, who is a son of another patient who was confirmed last week
to have been infected in South Korea, had traveled to Huizhou after
first arriving in Hong Kong on Tuesday, according to South Korean
and Chinese authorities.
Hong Kong health authorities said 29 people had been in close
contact with the Korean in Hong Kong, with 12, including three
Koreans, being kept in quarantine in hospital.
Of these, three were showing very mild symptoms, Leung Ting-hung,
controller of Hong Kong's Center for Health Protection, said. But
the chances of an outbreak in Hong Kong were low.
Two new victims in South Korea are believed to have caught the virus
from the first case confirmed last week, a 68-year-old man who had
traveled to Bahrain in April and May, and returned to South Korea
via Qatar.
Last week, South Korea's Health Ministry said there were 1,142 cases
of MERS in 23 countries and 465 deaths had been reported by May 16.
(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Viola Zhou
in Hong Kong; Editing by James Pomfret and Nick Macfie)
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