DEATH TOLL IN KOREA DUE TO MERS REACHES 24.

Pulmonary Medicine Blog By Dr Deepu

The AP (6/19, Tong-Hyung) reports that World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan “praised beleaguered South Korean officials and exhausted health workers, saying their efforts to contain a deadly MERS virus outbreak have put the country on good footing and lowered the public risk.” So far, MERS “has killed 24 people and sickened more than 160 people in South Korea.” But, “the number of people isolated at home and in medical facilities declined from about 6,700 on Thursday to just more than 5,900 on Friday, with more than 5,500 people so far released from the quarantine, the Health Ministry said.”

        Meanwhile, Bloomberg News (6/18, Suwannakij, Blake) reported that on Thursday, Thailand’s Ministry of Health “confirmed that a Middle Eastern tourist seeking treatment at a Bangkok hospital has tested positive for” MERS in what is Thailand’s “first case of the virus.” The patient is a “75-year-old man” who “traveled to Thailand for treatment of heart disease at an unnamed private hospital on June 15, Health Minister Rajata Rajatanavin told reporters” yesterday.

        The AP (6/19, Doksone) reports that the patient displayed no “symptoms while traveling to Bangkok, but began to have fatigue and difficulty breathing after he was admitted to” the “hospital for treatment of his heart condition.”

        Reuters (6/19, Lefevre) points out that it took almost four days for Thai officials to make that confirmation. So far, 59 people are being monitored for the virus.

        CNN (6/18, Hanna, Parish) reports that Thailand is now “the 26th country with confirmed Middle East respiratory syndrome cases since the disease was identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012.”