South Korea’s relatively mild climate, unique culture and customs linked with hospital visits appear to have come together to egg on the largest outbreak of the Middle East respiratory syndrome outside its origin, experts and reports suggested.
Though health authorities have confirmed that the virus has not mutated to allow more contagious airborne transmission, officials and analysts floated a few factors that may contribute to the ongoing spike in the number of patients.
Song Dae-sub, a professor at Korea University’s College of Pharmacy, sees that the country’s dry and moderate weather provided a better living environment for the virus than much hotter and more humid Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries.
“In principle, Korea’s weather conditions make it easier for the virus to survive than Saudi’s,” he told a news briefing hosted last week by the Health Ministry.
“The virus gets weak if humidity rises. Even in a dry atmosphere, high temperatures and direct sunlight have a negative impact on its survivability.”
A woman wearing a mask, plastic gloves and a raincoat enters Samsung Medical Center, one of the most heavily MERS-affected hospitals, in Ilwon-dong, southern Seoul, Wednesday. (Yonhap)
His assessment could boost hopes for hitting the brakes on the continuing spread, as scorching heat followed by the summer rainy season draws near.
Yet the government and other experts warned against forging a hasty bond between the epidemic and the weather, saying more evidence is needed.
“I think that the climate has only a limited effect, if any, given that MERS has been proliferating only within the hospitals, rather than on a community basis,” said Kim Woo-joo, a Korea University internal medicine specialist and president of the Korean Society of Infectious Diseases.
“It will be safer to understand the spread as a result of the MERS patients’ contact with many other people in enclosed areas.”
In line with Kim’s remarks, the hospital environment and culture associated with patient visits have also been pointed to as further crucial contributors.
At major Seoul hospitals such as the Samsung Medical Center, which became the biggest source of MERS patients, patients race to make appointments with what they believe to be the best doctors in Korea, often having to wait for months until they receive surgery or other treatments.
The institutions’ crammed wards also make it easier for close contact between patients and their caretakers to occur, which is then accelerated by the culture where family members together visit their sick relatives.
Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, and Peter Ben Embarek, chief of the agency’s MERS team in Geneva, have also picked Korea’s culture of family members caring for their loved ones at home and in hospitals as one of the driving forces behind the outbreak.
“The country’s unique culture could indeed be one of the factors, including patients awaiting at emergency rooms before formally transferring to a ward, group patient visits and multi-bed rooms at hospitals,” Song added.
By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)
