The MERS coronavirus outbreak in South Korea is believed to be largely linked to a 35-year-old man in an overworked emergency department.
It only took 3 days for the coronavirus (MERS-CoV) to infect 82 people in South Korea from a single patient treated in a crowded emergency room, reveals a study published in The Lancet.
Last year, the Land of Morning Calm was the victim of a serious epidemic of MERS-CoV, a deadly pathogen originating in Saudi Arabia. In the space of two months, 186 people were infected and 36 died.
The reasons for this meteoric spread are still unknown. This is why infectious diseases specialists at the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul have traced the movements of patients infected with MER-CoV treated in their hospital to understand the chain of transmission.
More than 1,500 people exposed
The virus first arrived in the country via a 68-year-old man who has traveled to many Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia. Suffering from fever, cough and breathing difficulties, the latter went to the Samsung Medical Center on May 18, 2015. Faced with the symptoms, doctors suspected Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and isolated him.
Unfortunately, the damage has already been done: the 60-year-old has already infected 28 people including a 35-year-old man, nicknamed patient 14, with whom he shared a room in another hospital. For specialists, patient 14 is the cause of the MERS-CoV epidemic in the Samsung Medical Center.
On the day of his arrival in the emergency room, May 27, there was no evidence that patient 14 was exposed to MERS-CoV. But of the 1,576 people who came into contact with him, 82 (33 patients, 8 healthcare professionals and 41 visitors) developed symptoms of Middle East respiratory syndrome.
From animals to humans
Researchers’ analysis shows that patients in the emergency room with patient 14 had the highest risk of contracting the virus (20%) compared to those who only crossed paths with it in the radiology department. or visitors (5%). Health professionals had two 2% risk of being infected. Infectious disease specialists specify that no case was identified after patient 14 was placed in isolation. In other words, being exposed to a contaminated environment did not lead to further contamination.
“Overloaded services are an important problem in this epidemic but also a classic case in modern medicine, which should alert governments and health authorities in a context where other epidemics can arise”, underlines Pr Doo Ryeon Chung, co-author of the study.
Middle East respiratory syndrome was first detected in 2012 in Saudi Arabia. Since then, 26 countries have reported cases of MERS in their territory. Outbreaks continue to be reported in Saudi Arabia, especially in the Riyadh region. The transmission routes are still poorly understood. Experts believe that in the Middle East cases are mainly linked to direct and indirect contact with an infected camel. But human-to-human transmission is not ruled out either. It would be possible especially during times of prolonged contact. “We have observed this transmission between members of the same family, patients and health workers,” says the World Health Organization. The majority of cases have resulted from human-to-human transmission in health facilities ”.
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