Risk Factors for Transmission of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Infection During the 2015 Outbreak in South Korea

Abstract

These findings indicate that transmission is determined by host infectivity and the number of contacts, whereas super-spreading events were determined by the number of contacts and hospital visits. These relationships highlight the importance of rapidly enforcing infection control measures to prevent outbreaks.

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus transmission among health care workers: Implication for infection control

“…15 During the outbreak investigation, there were 4 spreaders (transmitting MERS to ≥1 individuals), and 1 possibly was a superspreader (transmitted the virus to 4 HCWs). She then went to the Philippines and started to have symptoms.…”

High reproduction number of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus in nosocomial outbreaks: mathematical modelling in Saudi Arabia and South Korea

“…Therefore, the shortest serial interval could be the same as the incubation period, and the longest serial interval could be the sum of the incubation period and the maximum duration of infectiousness. During the Korean MERS outbreak, several superspreading events occurred because the MERS cases were not isolated immediately upon presentation of clinical symptoms [18]. Thus, these cases contacted susceptible individuals for up to one week after the onset of their clinical symptoms.…”

Unusual presentation of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus leading to a large outbreak in Riyadh during 2017

“…Although many outbreaks occurred in KSA and elsewhere, the link to CT value and superspreading has not been clearly identified to be a statistically significant risk factor. 9 In addition, over the past 5 years, many smaller outbreaks have not been reported in peer-reviewed journals, highlighting the simple fact the patients presenting with MERS-CoV who have underlying chronic renal failure and heart disease are too often missed by health care workers early in their presentation. Continuing education and training of the large, rapidly changing expatriate health care worker population in KSA is needed to stop future outbreaks.…”

“…In MERS-COV, previous reports have attributed this phenomenon to either a very high viral load in the upper airway secretions of the index case (usually related to exposure to patients in the later stage of disease; that is, the second week of illness]), excessive cough or aerosol-generating procedures, or/and delayed diagnosis and improper isolation of the index case due to other illnesses known to mask MERS-CoV clinical presentation (eg, chronic renal failure and chronic heart disease). [6][7][8][9] In this report, we describe a patient who presented with acute renal failure requiring hemodialysis and became a MERS-CoV superspreader igniting a recent multihospital outbreak in Riyadh. We describe the outbreak at King Saud Medical City (KSMC).…”