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Post by Admin on Jun 5, 2015 20:39:40 GMT
Spread of MERS, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, in South Korea has stoked fast-rising anxiety about a disease for which there is no known cure. Nearly 1,200 Korean schools have shut down for fear of the mysterious virus spreading among vulnerable children as the number of people with the infection rose above 40, four of whom have died. Upwards of 1,500 exposed to carriers of the virus were quarantined. Most of the cases were confined to one hospital, but passengers on buses and trains, on busy streets, in crowded shopping malls, in parks and playgrounds everywhere wore face masks. The virus, which originated in Saudi Arabia, is closely related to SARS, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that claimed hundreds of victims a dozen years ago. While less infectious than SARS, MERS is viewed as more likely to prove fatal – approximately 40% of more than 1,200 people diagnosed worldwide in 20 countries, mostly in the middle east, have died from the disease since it was diagnosed in people in Saudi Arabia three years ago.The disease had mutated from Saudi Arabian camels, some of which were discovered in the 1990s to be carrying the virus. Amid mounting alarm, Koreans tend to blame the government for not acting fast enough to contain the virus. A Gallup Korea poll showed the popularity rating of President Park Geun-Hye had fallen by six points to 34% — a drop attributed largely to complaints about the government’s slow response. By now more people have come down with MERS in South Korea than in any country outside the middle east. Dr. John Linton at Severance Hospital in Seoul said one reason the rate of incidence was higher in Korea than elsewhere is the custom of relatives staying in the same room with those who are hospitalized.
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Post by Admin on Jun 6, 2015 20:38:10 GMT
Nine new cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome were discovered in South Korea on Saturday, five of them stemming from transmissions at one of the country’s largest and best hospitals, as officials struggled to contain the virus that has so far infected 50 people, killing four. The announcement of five new cases at Samsung Medical Center in southern Seoul meant that a substantial new source of infection had been identified in the capital, a city of 10 million. A large, modern hospital owned by the Samsung conglomerate, the center is staffed by some of South Korea’s best-trained medical personnel. The five infected people had all been treated in the hospital’s emergency room, where a patient with the disease, known as MERS, was treated on May 27, the Health Ministry said in a statement on Saturday. The patient had earlier infected two other people in the emergency room, a doctor and a visitor. South Korea’s outbreak of MERS, a disease first detected in Saudi Arabia in 2012, is the largest to date outside the Middle East, where the vast majority of the more than 440 deaths attributed to it have occurred. Of the 50 cases in South Korea, 33, including the first laboratory-confirmed case, were found among the patients, visitors and medical staff of a hospital south of Seoul.
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Post by Admin on Jun 7, 2015 20:43:21 GMT
So far, the respiratory virus has had a hard time spreading from person to person. Most of its victims had direct contact with camels, or caught the virus in a healthcare facility that was caring for a MERS patient. Theoretically, it should be easy to stop person-to-person transmissions by wearing masks and washing hands. But MERS spread at a dialysis clinic in Saudi Arabia last year and more recently at a clinic and hospital in South Korea, where a man who returned from Saudi Arabia two weeks ago spread the virus to 34 others. One of those exposed in South Korea traveled to China, flying and riding a bus while likely contagious. It’s not yet clear whether that man passed the virus on. MERS can cause fever, cough, shortness of breath, diarrhea, body aches, nausea and, in the most serious cases, pneumonia and kidney failure, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its incubation period is usually 5 or 6 days, but people can be contagious for up to 14. The virus kills by causing respiratory or kidney failure, or septic shock, an infection that overwhelms the body’s defenses. Those most vulnerable to dying from MERS appear to be men over 50 with a preexisting medical condition, including kidney or lung disease, diabetes, or cancer treatments that reduce immunity, according to the World Health Organization. Although MERS has now been known for more than three years, there are no specific vaccines or treatments for it. The sickest patients are placed in intensive care and treated according to their symptoms. In South Korea, officials acted quickly to contain the disease’s spread. Just as with Ebola in West Africa, the best way to control the virus is by identifying and isolating anyone who has been in contact with an infected person, says Darryl Falzarano, a research scientist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization, International Vaccine Center (VIDO-InterVAC) at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. This week, South Korea has quarantined more than 1,300 people and closed hundreds of schools to keep the virus from spreading further. As a respiratory disease, MERS can be spread through droplets coughed into the air. If they are breathed in or land on a surface that someone else touches, that person can contract the disease. A sick person with virus on their hands can also spread it. Casual contact, such as passing someone on the street, is not believed to risky, according to the CDC. On August 5, 2013, a sick camel was treated and later sold by its owner, a 38-year-old Saudi Arabian man. Camels are suspected of transmitting the MERS virus to humans. So far, it seems that MERS is mainly spread from camels to people; many of those who have fallen ill either take care of camels, have come into close contact with them, or consumed camel products like raw meat or unpasteurized milk. It’s not entirely clear how this most recent outbreak has been spreading, though it’s possible that whatever treatment MERS patients are receiving is contributing to the spread.
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Post by Admin on Jun 9, 2015 20:30:16 GMT
The world is watching South Korea as the latest outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) unfolds. But how exactly the virus jumps to humans in the first place is still unknown, and clues to that puzzle lie thousands of kilometres away. The cluster of hospital-associated cases in South Korea — the largest MERS outbreak outside the Middle East — has so far killed 7 people and infected 95, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Hundreds of schools have been shut. Although the causal coronavirus, MERS-CoV, is considered a potential pandemic threat, specialists told Nature that they expect authorities to quickly bring this outbreak under control. A much bigger challenge than emergency response, they say, is how to stop MERS being transmitted from animals to people in the Middle East, where it is endemic in camels. “The focus on South Korea would be better directed towards Saudi Arabia,” says David Heymann, a researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and chair of Public Health England, to stop the cases that continue to spark new outbreaks at the source. Since it was first detected in Saudi Arabia in 2012, MERS-CoV has infected around 1,200 people worldwide, roughly 450 of whom have died, according to the WHO. The virus is thought to originate in bats and to jump to humans through an intermediate animal, such as camels. It does not easily spread between people, partly because it infects deep areas of the lungs, and is not coughed out. Most of the human infections, however, were the result of human-to-human spread, which can occur in hospitals when certain medical procedures combine with poor infection control to disseminate the virus. The latest clusters began when a South Korean man returned to Seoul from the Middle East, and visited four health-care facilities before he was diagnosed. There is always a chance that as the virus spreads, it could acquire mutations that allow it to spread more easily between humans. But on 6 June, the South Korean health ministry announced that it had sequenced the virus in the current outbreak and that it was almost identical to past sequences from the Middle East. On the same day, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention posted a separate sequence to the publicly available GenBank database, from a man infected in the South Korean outbreak who then travelled to China, where he felt ill. Christian Drosten, director of the Institute of Virology at the University of Bonn Medical Centre in Germany has analysed this sequence and says that it is shows only minor mutations compared with Middle Eastern strains, none in areas of the genome thought to influence infectiousness. A stream of new cases in South Korea might create the impression that the disease is out of control. But all cases reported so far have clear transmission routes from the initial infection, says Ian Lipkin, an outbreak specialist at Columbia University in New York. The country is now intensively tracing and isolating the contacts of those infected, and implementing strict infection controls in hospitals. Were cases springing up outside of hospitals that would be cause for worry, but that is not happening, says Lipkin. In the Middle East, however, the virus continues to jump from camels to humans leading to hospital outbreaks. Heymann, who in 2003 led the global effort to contain severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, says that authorities in the Middle East should do more to investigate how people catch the virus from camels. Such studies would involve investigating the recent activities of infected people, finding out, for instance, whether they had had contact with animal carcasses or bodily fluids, had consumed fluids such as camel milk or urine, or had been near bat colonies. “It’s frustrating that all cases from animal infections have not been properly investigated,” says Peter Ben Embarek, leader of the WHO’s MERS team at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. One obstacle is cultural, in that Saudis tend to be averse to discussing what they consider private matters, he says.
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Post by Admin on Jun 10, 2015 20:32:56 GMT
In the third week of the MERS outbreak, South Korea is bracing for what national officials call "the most important period" in the effort to curb the spread. So far, nine people have died after contracting MERS and confirmed cases are at 108. More than 3,000 people in South Korea have been under quarantine in efforts to curb the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. But patients from the most-affected hospital are near the end of their mandatory quarantine period and health authorities are watching for whether they can be cleared this week. outh Korea has been struck by the largest outbreak of MERS outside Saudi Arabia, where the virus was discovered. According to scientists, South Korea could have more cases before the outbreak is fully contained. "We can expect to see further cases in the coming days and that will happen until everybody that has been infected, has not had the opportunity to transmit to other people," said Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, a World Health Organization scientist. The toll to South Korea's economy is not yet clear as thousands of people have canceled their trips to the country over MERS concerns. Travel agencies in China are predicting a 70% drop in summer travel to South Korea, according to Xinhua, the state media agency. June and July are typically the busiest travel seasons for the country. Hong Kong and Macau have raised a travel alert asking residents to avoid unnecessary travel to South Korea. In an attempt to allay concerns, the South Korean government issued a new website in English with tips on safe travels in the country. Several industries including restaurants, transportation, local exhibitions and cosmetic firms have taken a financial hit related to MERS.
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