Bumrungrad quarantines 58 staff after MERS incident
Play
BUMRUNGRAD International Hospital is quarantining 58 of its staff for 14 days after a patient from a Middle Eastern country tested positive for the deadly MERS virus on Thursday, a discovery that also prompted a nationwide alert.
The Bangkok hospital’s management Friday said the first case of Middle East respiratory syndrome in Thailand was a walk-in patient from Oman who had heart and respiratory problems.
Concerned that the patient might have MERS, the hospital placed him in a separate room from the outset of his stay despite initial resistance from his relatives.
As a precaution, all 58 personnel including doctors and nurses who had contact with the unnamed Omani are being closely monitored to ensure that the virus does not spread.
The hospital, which is popular among foreign visitors, said it had suspended its services for patients planning to come from at-risk countries such as South Korea and Middle Eastern nations. However, it said it could not turn down walk-in patients, while so far no patient had asked to leave the hospital since the discovery of the MERS victim.
Before the MERS crisis, 20 per cent of Bumrungrad’s large number of foreign patients were Middle Easterners.
The hospital said all of its staff who had contact with patients arriving at the hospital had been fully protected since the MERS outbreak, including staff who helped patients get out of vehicles.
The Omani patient arrived at the hospital’s emergency room around 9.45pm on Tuesday suffering serious heart and respiratory problems.
On that day he did not have a fever, but by the second day he did.
