School closures due to MERS seen as overreaction

Closures of kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools came to an end on Monday as the number of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) patients declined sharply. The number of schools that temporarily shut down, which started at 149 schools on June 2 and peaked at 2,903 schools on June 12, has continuously declined, before hitting zero on Monday. It is a good sign that Korean society is returning to normalcy after overcoming the ramifications of the MERS crisis.

Was school closure due to MERS was a justifiable measure? None of the 186 MERS patients in Korea happened at a school or community. Most cases involved patients who visited hospital emergency rooms, their family members, or medical professionals who were infected while treating MERS patients. A high school student who was hospitalized at Samsung Seoul Hospital was the only teenage MERS patient, and the student only showed cold-like symptoms before recovering instantly. A seven-year-old child in Seongnam City in Gyeonggi Province, who became a suspected case after visiting Samsung Seoul Hospital in the company of his father, was shown to be "MERS virus-negative" in the final of the six tests conducted on him.

No school was closed even in Saudi Arabia, which has had more MERS cases than any other countries. While participating at the World Conference of Science Journalists 2015, Muhammad Yahia, a reporter from Saudi Arabia said, “The government’s hardline reaction such as school closure stimulates public fear.” The Korea-World Health Organization joint investigation team also strongly recommended the education authorities of South Korea to resume classes, saying that MERS transmission was not related to schools. It would become a cause of global ridicule to close schools when infections only occurred at hospitals.

When respiratory illnesses or infectious diseases spread, school closure can be a viable countermeasure. During the new influenza outbreak in 2009, school closure significantly helped contain the transmission of new flu. However, the situation is different this time around. Keeping schools closed even after the possibility of community transmission was shown to be non-existent is overreaction that excessively heeds to parents’ anxiety over their children’s safety. When asked "whether they are concerned about MERS infection" in a Gallup Korea poll conducted last week, among the people who replied "yes," those who support the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy (56 percent) far outnumbered those who support the ruling Saenuri Party (36 percent). Would it have been influenced by the so-called "liberal educational superintendents" in office who spearheaded school closures at the pretext of MERS? It is uncomfortable to learn this, because disease prevention efforts might have also been influenced by political ideology as well.