24 January 2016•Update: 04 April 2016
By Max Constant
BANGKOK
Thailand’s public health ministry confirmed Sunday the country’s second case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), announcing that a man who arrived from Oman Friday was infected with the deadly and moderately contagious coronavirus.
Public Health Minister Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn told the Bangkok Post that the 71-year-old Omani tested positive twice in different Bangkok hospitals, and was transferred Saturday evening to the Bamrasnaradura Infectious Diseases Institute on the capital’s outskirts, where he was quarantined.
The patient had been treated at a hospital in Oman for a week for fever and a cough, added Sakolsatayadorn.
A relative who was travelling with him was also placed in quarantine.
The ministry is now trying to locate all persons still in Thailand who had contact with the patient, including 218 crewmembers and passengers on the flight from Oman, a taxi driver, a hotel employee and 30 hospital staff.
Of these, 36 individuals besides the patient’s relative are considered at high risk of contracting the disease due to close contact with him.
They include 23 passengers on the flight, the taxi driver and the hotel employee, as well as 11 hospital staff.
They will be quarantined when located, while others will be placed under close medical surveillance.
Thailand had confirmed its first case of MERS in June last year, when another elderly man from Oman tested positive.
He was treated at the infectious diseases institute for several weeks, declared clear of the virus – which has a fatality rate of more than 40 percent in Saudi Arabia where it was first discovered in 2012 – and authorized to leave Thailand.
No other person contracted the illness.
After the case was confirmed, the health ministry had threatened some hospitals with legal action following reports that two private hospitals had sent Middle Eastern patients suspected of being infected with MERS to a government-run infectious disease center in a taxi.
It warned that such transfers were against disease control protocols.
The government had also introduced new measures for the estimated 10,000 Thai Muslims who undertook the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in September, including vaccinations for flu and yellow fever before their travels and monitoring for up to a month upon return.
MERS is an acute viral respiratory disease caused by a coronavirus, with symptoms including fever, cough, shortness of breath and often pneumonia.
More than two dozen countries have reported cases of MERS, including the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and South Korea, where an outbreak killed more than 35 people last year.
