MERS spreads to Thailand

One of Thailand's leading hospitals, known for treating medical tourists, said on Friday it had received the country's first case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), as authorities said it had taken nearly four days to confirm the illness. The announcement comes as an outbreak in South Korea that began last month and has infected 166 people, killing 24 of them, appears to be leveling off.

Thailand said on Thursday a 75-year-old businessman from Oman, who had traveled to Bangkok for medical treatment for a heart condition, had tested positive for MERS.

The high-end Bumrungrad Hospital, run by Thailand's second-largest hospital operator, identified the first MERS case. The hospital in central Bangkok treats over a million patients a year, about half of them foreigners.

"The patient came to us tired, coughing ... there was no fever," a doctor from the private hospital told a televised news conference. "So we X-rayed his chest ... we found that he could have two things, a heart condition or the MERS virus."

The hospital said 58 staff had been quarantined, but all other operations were continuing as normal.

The infected man was moved to Bangkok's Bamrasnaradura Infectious Diseases Institute on Thursday. Staff there were seen wearing and giving out masks to visitors. Health warnings were posted in front of the building's entrance.

Isolated cases have cropped up in Asia before South Korea's outbreak began last month, and Thailand is the fourth Asian country to register a case. The Thai case will compound fears in Asia of a repeat of a 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which began in China and killed about 800 people globally.

The outbreak in South Korea appears to have peaked, with just one new case reported on Friday and the number of people in quarantine down 12 percent to 5,930, though authorities were taking no chances. The contagion has been traced to a 68-year-old man who returned from a business trip to the Middle East in early May.

"Given the current developments, we have judged that it has leveled off, but we need to watch further spread, further cases from so-called intensive control hospitals," the South Korean health ministry's chief policy official, Kwan Deok-cheol, told a briefing in Seoul.

In Thailand, authorities were screening passengers from countries seen at risk of MERS and stepping up public information about the virus, another health official said.

The Middle East is an important source of tourists for Thailand, with arrivals from the region up by nearly 50 percent in January, according to the tourism office.

Bangkok is also one of the region's main aviation hubs.

The vast majority of MERS infections have been in Saudi Arabia, where more than 1,000 people have been infected since 2012, and about 454 have died. There is no cure.

Reuters