A South Korean citizen has been admitted to hospital in Slovakia with a suspected case of MERS, while South Korea has reported seven new cases in a recent outbreak which has killed 14 people.
The South Korean man thought to have contracted MERS was hospitalised in the Slovak capital Bratislava yesterday.
The man reportedly arrived in Slovakia on 3 June and works for a subcontractor of Seoul carmaker Kia, which runs a plant in the central European country.
The new cases put the total number of infections of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in South Korea at 145, the health ministry said.
Four of the new cases were infected in Samsung Medical Centre in Seoul, one of the country's largest hospitals where more than 70 people have contracted the virus, it said.
Separately, a paramedic who helped transport a MERS patient to the hospital on 7 June was infected.
Yesterday, authorities announced that the ambulance driver also involved in transporting the patient, who died three days later, had also been infected.
One of the other new patients was infected in the central city of Daejeon and another in Hwaseong, about 43km south of Seoul.
The ministry reported no new fatalities, and said ten patients so far had recovered and been released from hospital.
In order to prevent further infections among patients and medical staff, Samsung hospital this morning temporarily suspended most of its operations.
It will stop treating outpatients, admitting new patients, or performing surgeries that are not deemed urgent, hospital president Song Jae-Hoon told reporters.
No visitors will be allowed, he said, adding he would decide on 24 June whether or not to continue the partial suspension.
"We offer our deep apology and express regret to all of our patients who were infected here and those placed under quarantine," he said.
The number of people who came into contact with patients and were put under quarantine, either at state facilities or at home, rose today by more than 800 to 4,856.
There is no vaccine or cure for MERS which, according to World Health Organization data, has a fatality rate of around 35%.
The outbreak in South Korea, the largest outside Saudi Arabia, began when a 68-year-old man was diagnosed on 20 May after a trip to Saudi Arabia.
The virus has since been spreading at an unusually fast pace, sparking widespread alarm in Asia's fourth-largest economy.
A team of WHO experts who visited Seoul warned that the outbreak in the South was "large and complex" and more cases should be expected.
But it also said it had found no evidence of transmission of the virus in communities outside hospitals.
The outbreak also sparked alarm elsewhere in Asia including Hong Kong, which last week advised its citizens to avoid non-essential travel to South Korea.
