On Thursday, warning regarding an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in South Korea was issued. It has been demanded that strict border checks should be conducted. Five new cases of the disease have been reported.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said efforts are required to stop the outbreak that started two weeks ago. He added that the disease entered the country when a South Korean man came back from a business trip to the Middle East. The disease caused death of two people. There have been 35 cases in South Korea, making it the country with the most infections outside the Middle East where the disease was reported in 2012. There were 440 fatalities caused by the disease in the Middle East.

According to a health ministry official, nearly 1,600 people have been quarantined in South Korea and majority of them are at home or in medical institutions. MERS infection is caused by coronavirus, which belongs to the same family that caused SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

According to Dr. Leo Poon, a virology expert at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, "So far, the virus has been circulating in humans for three years. We found little transmission in human. We know there is human-to-human transmission, but it's not sustainable". He has also worked on the SARS outbreak more than a decade ago, which killed hundreds of people around the world.