MERS team report five new cases and one death in South Korea

World Today

Tourists wear masks as a precaution against MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) at a shopping district in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, June 5, 2015. Sales of surgical masks surge amid fears of a deadly, poorly understood virus. Despite media warnings about the virus “spreading” in South Korea, most of the cases are linked to a single hospital, as is a Korean man diagnosed in China. There’s no evidence yet in South Korea “of sustained transmission in the community,” the WHO reports. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

The South Korean Health and Welfare Ministry on Friday reported five additional cases of MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in the country.

During a briefing in Sejong, health ministry official Kwon Jun-wook also confirmed one more death, bringing the total number of deaths so far from this deadly, poorly understood virus, to four.

More than 40 other cases have also been confirmed and hundreds are now in quarantine.

The cases are linked to a 68-year-old man who travelled to the Middle East and came in for treatment at Pyeongtaek St. Mary’s Hospital.

It’s the largest outbreak in the world outside of Saudi Arabia, where most of the more than 1,100 cases have been and where the disease was first seen in 2012.

Report by The Associated Press