South Korea MERS Virus Update 2015: Death Count Rises to 31, Total Infections at 181

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South Korea announced two more casualties from Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak in the country. On Friday, the total death toll has risen to 31 and a new case was confirmed which brings the total to 181 infected cases since the disease started spreading last month, according to CNN.

The latest deaths were from elderly patients with already pre-existing medical conditions before contracting the MERS virus, as with most deaths related to the infection so far.

The South Korean MERS outbreak is considered to be the largest to occur outside of the Arabian Peninsula. The outbreak has devastated the country's economy as it resulted in more than 100,000 tourists canceling their visit in the country since the outbreak was confirmed.

"The economy is being weighed down by MERS, which has seriously hurt consumption and the service sector," said Finance Minister Choi Kyung-Hwan on Wednesday.

In trying to minimize SoKor's losses financially and economically, the government announced more than $13 billion stimulus package to support businesses that were affected by the outbreak. The country's central bank also reduced its key interest rate at the beginning of this month.

A preliminary study made by researchers from Hong Kong found how the outbreak was spread. The findings published in Eurosurveillance indicated that the disease was disseminated by three "superspreaders" and the spread followed the pattern that was similar to to the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s.

"This outbreak demonstrates the potential for clusters of emerging infectious diseases to have very substantial societal and economic impact," the researches led by Benjamin Cowling and colleagues at the University of Hong Kong wrote.

"The parallels with superspreading events driving the spread of SARS in 2003 in Hong Kong and Singapore emphasise the importance of understanding these events and of determining the measures that could be taken to reduce the risk of similar incidents happening in the future."

Meanwhile, the South Korean man who was China's only MERS case has been released from a Chinese hospital on Fridy after a full recovery, Reuters reports.

The unnamed man flew to Hong Kong last month and took a bus to China despite quarantine announcements from South Korean health authorities. He was hospitalized in Huizhou after testing positive for MERS.

This brings the number of recovered MERS patients to 82, around 45 percent of the total number of cases.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), since MERS' first reported case in September of 2012 in Saudi Arabia, there is now more than 400 deaths from the infection worldwide.