By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
A 49-year-old was among three more South Korean MERS victims confirmed by the Health Ministry on Tuesday, bringing the country's death toll to 19 since the flu-like illness broke out late last month.
None of the previous local fatalities were under the age of 50 -- most had been elderly or already unwell when they contracted the viral disease.
But now four of the victims can be said to have had no significant medical issues prior to MERS, and more than a third of South Korea's 154 cases have been under the age of 50.
With the government saying that just 17 of the country's patients had made full recoveries, the country's Health Ministry announced Tuesday it is to begin trials of an experimental plasma treatment using blood from patients who have successfully fought off the infection.
With thousands more under isolation orders, South Koreans have been forced to learn very fast about an illness that has been predominantly based in Saudi Arabia since being discovered in humans in 2012.
Most alarming is the 40 percent fatality rate associated with MERS before its arrival in South Korea.
Perhaps in an effort to banish the kind of scaremongering that has dragged down the local economy -- forcing an interest rate cut by the Bank of Korea last week -- President Park Geun-hye appeared Tuesday at a reopened elementary school in Seoul’s Gangnam area.
The plush district, otherwise famous for its appearance in global music hit 'Gangnam Style', has been rocked by the outbreak. Its prestigious Samsung Medical Center is linked to around half of all South Korean cases.
While thousands of schools welcomed back students this week after closing at the peak of the country's infections, nearly 500 educational facilities were still shut nationwide.
A visiting team of World Health Organization experts recently found no reason for schools to be closed.
The WHO has also not advised against travelling to South Korea, on the basis that MERS is believed to spread within healthcare or close family settings.
On Tuesday, German clinic Niels-Stensen announced that a 65-year-old male had died of MERS in a hospital in Lower Saxony 10 days ago -- the first victim of the flu-like illness in Germany in two years.
Tests made on 200 people who had interacted with the patient showed that none were infected.
