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Vietnam faces risk of infecting, spreading MERS: official

Xinhua, June 2, 2015 Adjust font size:

Vietnam is facing risk of infecting and spreading the Middle East respiratory syndrome(MERS) coronavirus, said Tran Dac Phu, head of Vietnam's Ministry of Health's General Department of Preventive Medicine (GDPM) here on Tuesday.

Phu made the remark at an urgent meeting of a steering committee on prevention and fight against MERS held in capital Hanoi on Tuesday.

The disease can enter and spread in Vietnam as Vietnamese citizens travel to the virus-hit areas and as other countries' citizens who have come from or passed the virus-affected regions arrive in Vietnam, assessed Phu.

As of Tuesday, a total of 25 cases infected with MERS and two deaths have been reported in South Korea, said a GDPM report.

The viral respiratory disease was first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012. The origin of MERS is a novel coronavirus, a large family of viruses that can cause diseases ranging from the common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

Approximately 36 percent of reported patients with MERS have died, said World Health Organization (WHO).

So far, the disease has spread to 26 countries with 1,154 infected cases and 434 deaths.

Speaking at the meeting, Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long urged passengers from South Korea to make health declarations at international border gates.

Those who are from MERS-hit areas are asked to make health declarations, have regular health check-up and limit contact with other people when detecting the disease's symptoms, said Long.

Before that, the Ministry of Health has issued an action plan to prevent and fight against MERS in Vietnam, reported the state- run news agency VNA on Tuesday.

Statistics showed that, so far in 2015, some 23,000 people have entered Vietnam from nine virus-affected countries via two international airports of northern Noi Bai and southern Tan Son Nhat. Endi