SEOUL (The Straits Times/ANN): South Korea has confirmed two more cases of the coronavirus, bringing the total to 18, with one of the latest cases involving a patient who had returned from Singapore.
The Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) on Wednesday (Feb 5) said a 38-year-old South Korean man who had visited Singapore for work and had come into contact with an infected Malaysian tested positive for the virus, Yonhap reported.
The country's 17th case had attended a week-long conference in Singapore from Jan 18, the country's Ministry of Health and Welfare said in a statement.
He was informed that one of the people he had interacted with in Singapore was diagnosed with the virus, so he visited a clinic in South Korea on Tuesday and was confirmed to have contracted the illness.
The 18th case was a 21-year-old South Korean woman who is the daughter of the 16th patient, who had returned from a trip to Thailand on Jan 19 but moved freely for around two weeks before she was diagnosed with the virus.
The KCDC said it is tracing the steps of all the country's confirmed cases to determine where they went and the people they may have met, amid growing concerns over further human transmission.
The public health agency said earlier that it has quarantined 129 people to test for the novel coronavirus and is checking 1,318 who came into contact with an infected person for signs of the illness.
As of early Wednesday, the virus that is thought to have originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has claimed almost 500 lives, while infecting more than 24,000 people around the world. - The Straits Times/Asia News Network
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