Effect of Information Disclosure Policy on Control of Infectious Disease: MERS-CoV Outbreak in South Korea

Noh, Jin-Won; Yoo, Ki-Bong; Kwon, Young Dae; Hong, Jin Hyuk; Lee, Yejin; Park, Kisoo

This study had several limitations. First, we did not analyze the effects of other noteworthy variables such as the increased number of health authorities' staff, medical facilities' capacity bolstering, the strengthened engagement of media, and other private sectors over time. For example, increases in the number of staff members in the Central MERS Management Task Force played an important role in preventing and controlling the outbreak. Therefore, the size of the MERS Rapid Response Team dispatched to exposed hospitals should be included in further studies. Besides, hospitals regardless of having MERS patients at that time in Korea had been more involved in detecting and controlling outpatients and visitors as time went by. Therefore, this factor could be one of the reasons to help decrease the number of Patients during this outbreak. For instance, some hospitals started to set up the system of screening the ER patients by their disease of communicable and non-communicable type. Plus, private organizations such as media, transportation, many business associations had done their job to raise awareness of the importance of hygiene campaigns like proper and frequent handwashing and coughing on sleeves. These voluntary movements also could be an element of dealing with 2015 MERS-CoV in Korea. Second, some individual-and hospital-level information was not adjusted for in this study because of data limitation. The transmission of MERS-CoV in Korea occurred mainly in hospitals [16] . We assumed it at the similar environment. People also avoided outings as a preventive measure against MERS-CoV. Therefore, we could not adjust for these factors. Further research including more individual and hospital level data is needed. Third, it took 2-3 days to confirm MERS-CoV infection via PCR test. The time taken to record PCR test results might be dependent on laboratory capacity. However, we conducted sensitivity analyses and our results were consistent.