BEIJING, May 31: China has isolated 65 people who came in close contact with a South Korean man with MERS, the country’s first confirmed case of the virus.
The 65 people have been isolated and kept under observation in Guangzhou and Hong Kong.
The 44-year-old man, who flew from Korea to Hong Kong on Tuesday tested positive for the deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in south China’s Guangdong Province on Friday.
He is still quarantined and receiving treatment at a hospital in Huizhou City, the provincial health and family planning commission said.
He got fever but is in stable condition, according to the commission.
Nine passengers who had close contacts with him reported to the commission after it issued a public notice on Friday, bringing the number of people who have contacts with him to 47.
They are all under medical observation in isolation.
Also, 18 people having close contact with a South Korean man infected with the MERS have been sent to a quarantine camp, including two South Korean women who had earlier refused to be quarantined, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government has said.
With the city on high alert over MERS on Saturday, the two Korean women among 18 plane passengers who sat close to the MERS patient have been tracked down in the Causeway Bay shopping district and quarantined, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
He had close contact with MERS patients at home and expressed discomfort as early as May 21.
The patient is the son of the third confirmed MERS case in the ROK and the brother of the ROK’s fourth confirmed case.
MERS is a respiratory illness caused by a new type of corona virus.
The first case was identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012.
There is no vaccine or treatment for the disease, which has a fatality rate of 40.7 per cent. (PTI(
Follow our WhatsApp channel