All 14 South Korean citizens who were quarantined at hospitals in Hong Kong and China for exposure to MERS have been discharged after completing their quarantine periods, a South Korean official said Thursday.
  

They had been under quarantine in Hong Kong and the southern Chinese province of Guangdong since making contact with a 44-year-old South Korean man who flew to Hong Kong on May 26, a day after his father was diagnosed with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in South Korea. He subsequently went to Guangdong by bus and was confirmed to have the virus there.
  

Of the 14 Korean citizens, 10 were released Tuesday and the remaining four were released late Wednesday, the official at the South Korean Embassy in Beijing said on the condition of anonymity.
  

The Korean MERS patient, who has been treated under isolation at the Huizhou Municipal Central Hospital in Guangdong, is slowly recovering, China's health authorities said.
  

Deng Xilong, a doctor who has treated the Korean patient, told the state-run China Daily newspaper that he had tested negative for the virus over the past five days.
  

"His sputum has tested negative for the MERS virus twice, but we still keep him in quarantine because his symptoms haven't disappeared," the newspaper quoted Deng as saying.
  

Hong Kong, which is sensitive after an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003, issued a travel alert earlier this week, advising its people against making unnecessary trips to South Korea.
  

A total of 16 people in Hong Kong tested negative for MERS on Wednesday, the city's health authorities said in a statement on Thursday. 
  

"We would like to reassure the public that the government will be as transparent as possible in the dissemination of information on suspected cases of MERS. Whenever there is a suspected case, particularly involving patients with travel history to Korea and the affected areas in the Middle East, the CHP will release information to the public as soon as possible once the laboratory test results are available," the statement said.
  

South Korea reported its first MERS case on May 20. So far, a total of 122 MERS cases have been reported in South Korea, marking the largest outbreak outside Saudi Arabia.
  

MERS is a viral respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus that was first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012, according to the World Health Organization.
  

The virus, which causes a fever, a cough and shortness of breath, has infected more than 1,100 people and more than 400 people have died from it, WHO said. There is no vaccine or specific treatment for the virus. (Yonhap)