The spread of the MERS-CoV Virus in South Korea
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0144778
During the early summer of 2015, the MERS-CoV epidemic plagued South Korea, becoming the biggest outbreak outside of the Middle East. According to the journal above, there were around 185 confirmed cases and 36 deaths; the consequences of a lack of proper control measures and cultural practices of visiting the sick were fatal. Given, the appearance of the virus was unexpected, and most physicians were unfamiliar with its symptoms. Combined with factors such as hospital rooms with several patients grouped together, the number of exposed Koreans quickly increased. However, once effective control measures were implemented in June, the number of confirmed cases decreased, eventually causing the disease to die out. Some measures included quarantine, restriction of travel, and encouraging basic hygiene practices. The spread and eventual end of the virus illustrate what we’ve studied about outbreaks in class.
For example, the paper estimates the R0 to be around 4.422 before the control measures were implemented. As we learned in class, if the R0 value is greater than one, then the disease will spread. Given how much larger the value was than one, it makes sense that the disease grew to be an epidemic. In addition, factors such as the cultural customs of visiting the sick and grouping multiple patient beds into one hospital room resulted in a higher k value, or the number of people an infected person has contact with that could result in an infection. Such practices made it easy for infected individuals to infect not only close family and friends, but total strangers as well, making the possibility of being infected with the virus very unexpected in its initial stages. Naturally, the Korean government made efforts to stop this spread, decreasing the k value through quarantine and decreasing the probability of becoming infected by encouraging people to practice good hygiene, like washing their hands thoroughly with soap. Fortunately, such measures were effective, and brought theR0 value below 1, causing the epidemic to die out.