A SOUTH KOREAN man suspected of having the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), who came to China’s Guangdong Province on Tuesday, has been placed under isolation in Huizhou City, the city’s health authorities said Thursday.

    The 44-year-old man, whose father was infected by the deadly virus, was among 64 people placed under isolation by South Korean health authorities last week.

    But the man had violated the quarantine order and disembarked in Hong Kong on Tuesday before heading to Huizhou via Shenzhen’s Shatoujiao Checkpoint on a business trip, Yonhap News Agency and YTN reported Thursday citing the South Korean disease control center.

    He has developed a fever and was sent to a Huizhou hospital early Thursday morning. Thirty-five people who had close contact with him showed no symptoms, local health authorities said.

    The unidentified man is the son of the third patient and the younger brother of the fourth patient, according to the Korean Center for Disease Control and Prevention under the Ministry of Health and Welfare. South Korea has confirmed seven patients.

    The South Korean health authorities notified the Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO) of his departure to make the suspected patient subject to examination.

    Hong Kong health officials are tracing around 200 passengers who were on board the same flight bound for China.

    The contact tracing will involve 158 passengers including 73 Chinese and eight crew members on board Flight OZ723 arriving in Hong Kong on Tuesday. The cross-border bus he took from the airport to Shenzhen involved around 10 people.

    First identified in humans in 2012, MERS is caused by a coronavirus, from the same family as the one that caused a deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Hong Kong in 2003. There is no cure or vaccine.

    The fatality rate for MERS is 30 to 40 percent – much higher than the 10-percent rate for SARS, and its incubation period is two to 14 days, according to Professor David Hui Shu-cheong, head of respiratory medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

    But Hui said the virus does not show a high human-to-human transmission rate.

    He cited an overseas study that traced some 280 people who had been in contact with MERS patients found that only 4 percent of them became infected by the virus.

    According to the World Health Organization, there were 1,139 confirmed cases of MERS, including at least 431 deaths as of Monday.(SD-Agencies)