Outbreaks of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in Two Hospitals Initiated by a Single Patient in Daejeon, South Korea

Park, Sun Hee; Kim, Yeon-Sook; Jung, Younghee; Choi, Soo young; Cho, Nam-Hyuk; Jeong, Hye Won; Heo, Jung Yeon; Yoon, Ji Hyun; Lee, Jacob; Cheon, Shinhye; Sohn, Kyung Mok

In contrast to the hospital outbreak of MERS-CoV in Saudi Arabia where the continuous influx of MERS cases from the community might complicate the identification of the timing and source of exposure [2, 8] , in Korea, there was no additional importation of MERS cases during the outbreak period. In addition, all MERS case were thoroughly traced and their contacts were closely monitored for symptom onset as early as possible whereas severe cases were more likely to be identified in Saudi Arabia. For these reasons, the MERS outbreak in Korea gave us the unique opportunity to further understand the epidemiologic characteristics and observe the wide range of clinical severity of MERS-CoV infection.