Health authority releases detailed manual on disease
Health authorities in Guangdong Province on Wednesday are still trying to locate the six other passengers who were on the same bus with a South Korean man diagnosed with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
The Guangdong provincial health and family planning commission has asked six other passengers who rode with the South Korean man on a bus from Sha Tau Kok, Hong Kong to Huizhou, Guangdong Province on May 26 to immediately get in touch with the commission.
By Wednesday, 78 people in Guangdong have been found to have come in contact with the patient and 72 of them have been quarantined. None of the quarantined has shown any symptoms, according to the commission.
He Jianfeng, an expert at the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Global Times that they traced most of the quarantined people in their workplaces, hotels and restaurants accompanied by the police.
Many passengers on the bus voluntarily got in touch with the health authorities, He said.
"If the other six did not stay close to the South Korean man on the bus, the possibility of being infected is remote," Liu Youning, a professor of epidemiology and respiratory medicine at the Chinese PLA General Hospital and a member of the Chinese Thoracic Society, told the Global Times.
"Even if they came in close contact with the man, there is still a slim chance of getting infected as none of the six reportedly showed any symptoms in the past week," Liu said.
The backup plan for the rest who remain out of contact is to closely monitor patients who suffer from fever and pneumonia in particular, He noted.
"It will be fine if none of them, who have yet to be found, is reported by local hospitals showing abnormalities within 14 days, given its 14-day incubation period," he added.
According to the commission, the South Korean man's condition in Guangdong has improved despite a slight fever.
On Tuesday, the National Health and Family Planning Commission issued a manual on MERS for health departments and hospitals, detailing the epidemiological history of the disease, its symptoms, laboratory tests, preventive measures, and treatment and care, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
In South Korea, the number of patients infected rose to 30 on Wednesday since the outbreak began two weeks ago, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
South Korea has quarantined or isolated about 1,300 people for possible MERS infection.
More than 200 schools were shut on Wednesday, most of them in the province of Gyeonggi, around Seoul, where the first death was reported on Monday.
