by Alex Jensen
SEOUL
A 16-year-old boy was confirmed Monday as South Korea’s first person under the age of 20 to be infected with MERS, a respiratory illness that has also now claimed six lives among the country’s 87 cases.
The education ministry announced that the teenager was hospitalized in Seoul late last month due to a separate health issue.
More than 1,800 schools and kindergartens nationwide were closed as of Monday morning in an effort to protect students.
All but one of South Korea’s MERS fatalities, however, have involved people over the age of 70 -- including the latest, an 80-year-old man who received treatment at a hospital in the central city of Daejeon, according to the health ministry.
The country’s outbreak sped up over the weekend, with its number of cases more than doubling since last Friday.
Only Saudi Arabia, where MERS was first reported in 2012, can now claim to have seen more infections.
Of grave concern to the South Korean public has been the disease’s global fatality rate of more than 40 percent prior to this outbreak.
Masked faces have become an increasingly common site in quieter than usual public spaces.
Many people are presumed to be staying at home, while more than 2,500 people have been given more official isolation orders after coming into contact with people who were later diagnosed with MERS.
Just two of the 87 infected patients have recovered sufficiently to be discharged from hospital so far.
World Health Organization officials were set to land in South Korea later Monday to investigate why the outbreak has moved so unexpectedly fast. The country’s very first MERS diagnosis, involving a man who had returned from the Middle East, came less than three weeks ago.
Meanwhile, a unification ministry spokesperson confirmed at a press briefing that Seoul is providing North Korea with three thermal scanners to help stop the disease from spreading across their heavily guarded border.
The equipment will be installed at the North’s Kaesong Industrial Complex -- an exceptional location in that its factories are run by South Korean business owners.
