The South Korean health ministry has announced that the hospital that served as the center for the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) epidemic will resume its regular day-to-day operation on Monday.
The outbreak of the MERS disease in South Korea is considered the largest one to occur outside of Saudi Arabia, where the virus is believed to have originated. Casualties from the epidemic in the East Asian country are recorded at 186 confirmed cases with 36 deaths.
The MERS infection in South Korea was traced to a local businessman who made a trip to a country in the Middle East back in May.
Half of the known cases were traced to Seoul's Samsung Medical Center, a hospital operated by the Samsung Group. The spread of the infection led hospital officials to suspend most of its services and refuse to take in additional patients for more than a month in order to focus on stopping the MERS outbreak.
The long waits for emergency rooms at the Samsung Medical Center helped fuel the transmission of the MERS virus, which severely tarnished the reputation of the hospital.
The MERS epidemic in South Korea has also resulted in the closure of schools and dealt a significant blow to the economy as many locals refused to go to public places and tourists from other countries cancelled their trips to the country.
The spread of the disease has also revealed inadequacies in South Korean health care, as locals were accustomed to visiting sick friends and relatives in groups, which resulted in an increase in risk of disease transmission.
Officials from the health ministry of South Korea said that they are in talks with the World Health Organization (WHO) in determining when to announce the end of the MERS outbreak.
According to reports, no person diagnosed with MERS has died in the country for six days, while there are only 16 more patients left in hospitals receiving treatment for the disease.
Data from the health ministry also show that there are only 150 suspected cases remaining in quarantine, a significant drop from the initial 6,700 cases reported by the government agency.
Photo: NIAID | Flickr
