Impact of Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak on the use of emergency medical resources in febrile patients

Jeong, Hyunho; Jeong, Sikyoung; Oh, Juseok; Woo, Seon Hee; So, Byung Hak; Wee, Jeong Hee; Kim, Ji Hoon; Im, Ji Yong; Choi, Seung Pill; Park, Kyoungnam; Cho, Byul Nim Hee; Hong, Sungyoup

There are few reports of the impact of airborne respiratory transmittable diseases on the use of medical resources. The study cited above demonstrated the deteriorating effects of Ebola outbreak on an already compromised healthcare system in Western Africa. The Ebola outbreak led to a decreased use of community health facilities and this resulted in extensive health and social consequences. 7 In contrast, emergency resource use was paradoxically increased in South Korea following the outbreak of MERS. This phenomenon was attributed to differences in the infectivity and mortality rates of the two diseases. Ebola led to significant mortality, with 11,220 deaths reported among 27,443 clinically consistent cases of Ebola. Among health care workers, 509 deaths occurred in 874 infected and clear clinical cases. 20 The mortality of MERS was less than that of Ebola and the outbreak of MERS in Korea was limited to hospital-to-hospital or intra-hospital transmission, without wide spread transmission in communities. 4 The fact that Koreans have easy access to emergency care facilities influenced the increased use of emergency medical services after the outbreak in Korea, compared to Western Africa. 21 This study confirmed that an increased number of patients attended the ED with febrile symptoms, after the outbreak of a respiratory transmittable disease, compared to the annual volume of febrile patients attending the ED. This indicates that, following an outbreak, more patients with milder symptoms use emergency resources and more patients seek emergency care at an early stage.