MERS Virus Outbreak 2015: South Korea Sees First 2 Deaths from Respiratory Illness

On Tuesday, South Korea authorities have identified two casualties from the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in the country. 

The country's first confirmed deaths were a woman, 51, and a man, 71. Both died from acute respiratory failure on Monday while they were being treated for the illness in a hospital, the New York Times reports.

As of writing, the total count for confirmed MERS cases is at 25, with approximately 700 people quarantined at home or in medical facilities. According to the International Business Times, all of South Korea's confirmed MERS cases were linked to a 68-year old man who returned from Bahrain via Qatar.

South Korea's first MERS case was reported on May 20. President Park Geun-Hye has since expressed dissatisfaction over the response of health officials.

"Early measures were a bit unsatisfactory to firmly block MERS spreading into our society," President Geun-Hye said, according to ABC News. "I hope that the joint counter-measure team puts all its efforts into this and will closely co-operate with local governments."

"The current situation is extremely concerning since we haven't seen a spread like this outside the Middle East," professor Song Dae Sub of Seoul's Korea University told Bloomberg. "It's a matter of whether the spread will go outside the hospitals and expand to the general community, because that will exponentially increase the spread."

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a viral illness that affects the lungs. The disease reportedly emerged first in Saudi Arabia last September 2012, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Three to four out of 10 people infected with the respiratory illness have reportedly died; most of those who passed away have developed an underlying condition.

MERS-CoV spreads through close contact with people who are infected. Symptoms include fever, cough, difficulty breathing, diarrhea, nausea, and in severe causes pneumonia and kidney failure.  Since its discovery in 2012, there have been 1,172 cases of MERS-CoV infection including 479 deaths, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.  It is not known where the virus came from, but camels are said to be the primary source of human infections.

According to CBC California, there is no known vaccine or cure for the MERS virus, which is considered to be the deadlier cousin of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that caused a serious outbreak in China in 2003.