Coronavirus – Credit CDC PHIL
# 7569
There’s been a story bubbling on Twitter, and in the South Korean press, for about 10 hours now regarding a Korean construction worker in Saudi Arabia who died Sunday with symptoms consistent with the MERS coronavirus; fever, acute pneumonia and renal failure.
As of right now, it should be stressed, we have no confirmation that this patient was infected with MERS-CoV. We will have to await confirmatory lab tests to know if this is actually a MERS case.
FluTrackers has several machine translated reports from the Korean Press in this thread, but I’ve been waiting for something a little more `readable’ before I posted it. In the past hour or so, the Korea Herald has published a very preliminary English language report (h/t @HelenBranswell).
Korean suspected of MERS infection dies in Saudi Arabia
Updated : 2013-08-13 21:40
A Korean man suspected to have contracted a new coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome died in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, a day after he was hospitalized for a severe fever, health officials in Seoul said Tuesday.
<SNIP>
The 53-year-old man, who worked at an aluminum factory construction site, died of vasodilatory shock, renal failure, breathing problems and acute pneumonia, according to doctors in the Middle Eastern country.
The Korean Health Ministry plans to dispatch a team of doctors to confirm the cause of death and recommended the Foreign Ministry to limit entry of other Koreans who worked or stayed with the man.
I’ve seen other (machine translated) Korean language reports that suggest a number of contacts with this patient may be in `quarantine’. It is the middle of the night in South Korea right now, and after a quick scan of the Korean CDC website I don’t find any announcements on this case.
They have (apparently, very recently) posted a Medical Respiratory Syndrome leaflet cited the Middle East ... in the Korean language, which unfortunately is in a graphic format, and I am unable to translate.
In reaction to the initial Korean news reports tweeted by @FluTrackers overnight, spokesperson for the World Health Organization Gregory Hartl, provided this context.
Right now, my confidence in the specifics of this story are not particularly high, but hopefully we’ll get some clarification in the next day or so.
