Preliminary epidemiological assessment of MERS-CoV outbreak in South Korea, May to June 2015

B J Cowling; M Park; V J Fang; P Wu; G M Leung; J T Wu

doi:10.2807/1560-7917.ES2015.20.25.21163

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Preliminary epidemiological assessment of MERS-CoV outbreak in South Korea, May to June 2015
B J Cowling^1,2 , M Park^1,2 , V J Fang¹ , P Wu¹ , G M Leung¹ , J T Wu¹
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Affiliations: ¹ World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Control, School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China ² These authors contributed equally to this work

Correspondence:
J Wu
joewu hku.hk
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Citation style for this article: Cowling B J, Park M, Fang V J, Wu P, Leung G M, Wu J T. Preliminary epidemiological assessment of MERS-CoV outbreak in South Korea, May to June 2015. Euro Surveill. 2015;20(25):pii=21163. https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES2015.20.25.21163 Received: 15 Jun 2015

Abstract

South Korea is experiencing the largest outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus infections outside the Arabian Peninsula, with 166 laboratory-confirmed cases, including 24 deaths up to 19 June 2015. We estimated that the mean incubation period was 6.7 days and the mean serial interval 12.6 days. We found it unlikely that infectiousness precedes symptom onset. Based on currently available data, we predict an overall case fatality risk of 21% (95% credible interval: 14-31). .