Hong Kong orders 18 into quarantine after Korean traveller is diagnosed with Mers
Search continues for dozens more people who were in close contact with Korean confirmedto be first case of the deadly disease in China
PUBLISHED : Friday, 29 May, 2015, 4:19pm
Hong Kong was on high alert yesterday as 18 people were ordered to undergo quarantine and scores more were being traced after coming into contact with a Korean man who was confirmed as China's first Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) patient.
Three others were admitted to Princess Margaret Hospital with mild respiratory symptoms after coming into contact with the index patient, who flew into Hong Kong from Seoul on Asiana Airlines flight OZ723 on Tuesday and took buses to Sha Tau Kok and Huizhou, Guangdong.
All three tested negative for Mers.
The Centre for Health Protection and the Hospital Authority announced yesterday that the 44-year-old Korean man had been confirmed by the mainland's National Health and Family Planning Commission as the first case of the killer virus in the country.
But officials urged the public not to panic.
"The virus does not transmit human-to-human sustainedly. Therefore, there would not be a major outbreak now," said Centre for Health Protection controller Dr Leung Ting-hung.
Authorities concluded that at least 29 of the 158 passengers on the flight - 14 Koreans and 15 Chinese - were in close contact with the patient, sitting within two rows in front of or behind him.
Of those, 18 were to be put under quarantine at the Lady MacLehose Holiday Village in Sai Kung for 14 days. The other 11 were believed to have left the city.
"They have gone to the mainland, South Korea and other countries," Leung said.
The information was passed on to authorities on the mainland and in South Korea, as well as the World Health Organisation for further contact tracing. Hong Kong officials said last night that they had managed to contact a total of 40 people.
Health minister Dr Ko Wing-man said: "I am very concerned about the outbreak of Mers. The most important thing for us now is to concentrate our efforts to search out the passengers on the same flight who have been identified as close contacts."
Two of those sent to hospital yesterday were among 52 passengers who were not in close contact with the patient on the flight. A third was a ticketing employee involved when the Korean caught a bus with the licence plate number PJ2595 from Chek Lap Kok airport to Sha Tau Kok. He then took a bus, with licence plate HN5211, to Huizhou.
Health authorities were trying to contact more than 20 people who shared the buses with the patient. Some of the passengers switched to a car, with licence plate NF4501, travelling to Danshui, Guangdong.
Health authorities are appealing to the people they are looking for to call the Centre for Health Protection's hotline at +852 2125 1111. Secretary for Security Lai Tung-kwok said the Immigration Department would help health officials track down the people.
The Korean patient, who was put under isolation in a Huizhou hospital, had a temperature of 39.5 degrees Celsius and symptoms of pneumonia. Thirty-eight people who had close contact with him on the mainland were also isolated, although they did not show unusual symptoms.
South Korea's health ministry apologised for letting the patient leave the country and put others at risk while he was under quarantine orders. His father and sister were also confirmed to be infected with Mers.
"We should have checked more actively and broadly on family related issues. We are deeply sorry about that," said Yang Byung-kook, director of the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Three more Mers cases were confirmed in South Korea yesterday, bringing the total to 10. Mers, a respiratory illness which was first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012, has afatality rate of about 40 per cent. There is no vaccine or treatment.
Re: MERS! Contact authorities if you were on same plane/bus/car as MERS patient!
Readers please take note! A police report has been filed to the HongKong police over this lunatic spreading rumours and causing panic among hongkong citizens!
Re: MERS! Contact authorities if you were on same plane/bus/car as MERS patient!
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Re: MERS! Contact authorities if you were on same plane/bus/car as MERS patient!
Quote:
Originally Posted by ShaTauKokDog
Readers please take note! A police report has been filed to the HongKong police over this lunatic spreading rumours and causing panic among hongkong citizens!
Korean authorities 'may be making the Mers outbreak worse', says Hong Kong expert on Sars
Expert chides Seoul's lack of transparency and failure to isolate Mers patients as one more dies.
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 04 June, 2015, 2:37am
An expert on Sars has hit out at the South Korean government over its handling of the Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) outbreak, and warned the situation "could get out of control" if there is not a cultural change in the way officials handle the problem.
One more patient died from the virus in the country on Wednesday night. The 83-year-old man was the first death of a patient among so-called third-generation cases - people who caught the virus from someone infected by a primary source. His death brought the number of deaths in South Korea to three.
South Korean media said the man had underlying diseases and had no contact with the country's first confirmed case. He was only confirmed to have been infected with Mers in tests done yesterday after his death.
Six new Mers cases were reported in South Korea yesterday, putting the total number of confirmed cases in the country at 36.
University of Hong Kong microbiologist Ho Pak-leung described the Mers outbreak in South Korea as "worrying and deteriorating", and criticised the government's handling of the problem. "Medical standards in [South] Korea are good, especially in plastic surgery," he said. "But the way they are handling infection controls is quite shocking to me. I am worried it may be making things worse."
South Korean media said Mers-infected patients had visited 14 hospitals in the country, but authorities would not name the institutions.
Ho said the practice of transferring infected or suspected patients between hospitals before isolating and treating them had put medical staff and patients at risk. He said there could be more outbreaks at different hospitals if this practice is not stopped.
Citing the experience of severe acute respiratory syndrome, Ho said the best way to minimise the risk of transmission was to centralise patients in one institution with experienced medics professionally trained to handle infectious diseases.
"Hong Kong learned a painful lesson from Sars that scattering patients around increases the death toll," Ho said.
South Korean officials should be transparent in releasing data so that experts could assess the situation accurately, Ho said. "Covering up data only causes more panic among the public. Even the Chinese government learned a lesson from Sars - to be more transparent," he added.
South Korean media reported one Mers patient had direct or indirect contact with about 1,400 people since showing symptoms.
More than 1,100 schools have been closed in South Korea and about 1,600 people put under quarantine.
The South Korean government said "it is a regret" that a 44-year-old Korean man infected with Mers entered the mainland via Hong Kong on May 26. It said it would "closely cooperate" with Hong Kong and the mainland.
North Korea has been alerted about the outbreak and officials have asked their southern counterparts to provide heat-detecting cameras to monitor the temperature of South Korean workers entering the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which lies north of the border. During last year's Ebola outbreak, the South lent the North three cameras.
Tourism industry feels the pain
South Korea's tourism industry is feeling the impact of Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers), with large numbers of foreign tourists, mostly from China, cancelling trips.
The World Health Organisation has not recommended any travel restrictions but about 7,000 people from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan had scrapped visits to South Korea as of June 2, a spokesman for the Korea Tourism Organisation said.
"A mass cancellation of this scale is very unusual … and many travellers cited the Mers outbreak as the main reason," a KTO spokesman said.
The Chinese are South Korea's biggest tourist group, with the number of travellers from the nation surpassing six million for the first time in 2014.
Japan said it was looking into possible quarantine measures for people arriving from South Korea.
Local discount outlets were quoted by Yonhap News Agency as saying they were worried about a possible decline in sales caused by the fall in Chinese tourists and the reluctance of local consumers to go shopping.
In Hong Kong, travel agency Package Tours is cancelling 11 tours to Seoul that depart between June 8 and 16, involving more than 200 people, "on customers' requests".
Managing director Yuen Chun-ning said all customers who had signed up for the tours wanted a full refund without handling charges.
"So we are cancelling the tours and refunding them," he said, adding that some had chosen to go to other destinations.
Joseph Tung Yao-chung, executive director of the Travel Industry Council, said at this stage the council would not recommend cancelling tours to Seoul. He hoped customers would understand it could be difficult to get a full refund given that no authorities had issued travel warnings against Seoul.
"The airlines may not refund the money and the receiving agents there also may not want to refund the money," Tung said.
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