Policemen wearing mask sit in a tent outside Lady MacLehose Holiday Village in Sai Kung, where people who came into close contact with the Korean MERS patient will spend two weeks in quarantine, in Hong Kong, China May 30, 2015.Reuters File 
Policemen wearing mask sit in a tent outside Lady MacLehose Holiday Village in Sai Kung, where people who came into close contact with the Korean MERS patient will spend two weeks in quarantine, in Hong Kong, China May 30, 2015.Reuters File
South Korea on Tuesday reported its first two deaths from an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
A second South Korean victim, an 85-year-old woman, died of acute respiratory system failure after coming in contact with the first MERS patient, a 71-year-old man, who also died of the same cause.
The South Korean health ministry on Tuesday reported several new cases that has now brought the total number of MERS patients in the region to 25, Reuters reported.
According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, South Korea now officially has the third highest number of cases after Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.
A South Korean national, who had defied the quarantine, has become the first MERS case in China. Following this, the South Korean authorities have imposed a travel ban on the nearly 700 people, isolated on grounds of possible infection.
In the meantime, the National Health and Family Planning Commission of China has said that the 44-year-old South Korean businessman entered the country with a fever on Monday and he landed in Hong Kong on Tuesday, before travelling to the internal immigration border in Guangdong province by cross-border bus.
China has currently put him in an isolation ward and notified the WHO, RFA reported.
The Chinese authorities are now trying to trace all the people the South Korean national may have come in contact with, including the 158 passengers on Asiana Airlines Flight 723.
MERS Virus
The first fatal MERS case was recorded in June 2012 in Saudi Arabia and was linked to Camels.
The deadly virus that, according to WHO, is not so contagious and belongs to the family of coronaviruses that includes the common cold and Sars, and can cause fever, breathing problems, pneumonia and kidney failure.
According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, there has been 1,167 cases of MERS worldwide, of which 479 have died.
