South Korean woman tests positive for coronavirus after Thailand visit

South Korea on Tuesday confirmed its 16th case of the coronavirus, a Korean woman who had returned home after a Thailand trip, as doctors reported the apparent recovery of a Korean man with the disease. The 42-year-old woman flew back to South Korea on January 19 after travelling in the Southeast Asian country, and began developing chills and other symptoms from January 25, the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said in a statement. The woman is the first foreign tourist reported to have been infected after a visit to Thailand. Thailand has reported 19 cases of the coronavirus, among the highest number of infections outside China. It confirmed the first case of human-to-human transmission of the virus inside the country on Friday, when a taxi driver tested positive. The KCDC’s statement did not explicitly rule out a visit to China by the patient. KCDC’s director Jeong Eun-kyeong declined to comment further. Tanarak Plipat, deputy director general of the Thai Department of Disease Control, said the woman could have contracted the virus in Thailand. “It’s possible because the virus is already spreading domestically in Thailand,” Tanarak said. Meanwhile, South Korea on Tuesday reported its first cured case of the novel coronavirus, for which a combination of flu and HIV medications was used. The National Medical Centre said the nation’s second coronavirus patient, a 55-year-old Korean man who had returned home after visiting Wuhan on January 22, had completely recovered from the disease. “He has already been cured of the disease. He is ready to be discharged from hospital this week,” Jung Ki-hyun, the head of the centre, was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency. South Korea’s apparent treatment success came days after Thailand announced a patient had recovered from the disease with a cocktail of antiviral drugs used to treat flu and HIV. The 71-year-old patient tested negative for the virus 48 hours after Thai doctors administered the combination. But Jung said it was hard to establish which among the drugs used were most effective. Thailand registers coronavirus treatment success with drug cocktail “It is true that HIV treatment drugs were used for the patient, but it must be noted that scientific evidence has not yet been accumulated to determine whether HIV treatment drugs are effective against the novel coronavirus,” Jung said. “Methods of treatment vary for different hospitals. We will form a clinical committee of medical personnel to share treatment methods information,” he added. In the United States, the case of a man who appeared to have recovered from the coronavirus after taking an experimental Gilead Sciences drug has prompted doctors to support further testing of the medication, which is used to fight hepatitis C and HIV. Gilead said the drug was approved for use on compassionate grounds. It was not licensed or approved anywhere in the world, and had not been demonstrated to be safe or effective for any use, it said. Are cocktail therapies for flu and HIV the magic cure for coronavirus? Back in South Korea, the government announced on Tuesday that traders who hoard face masks and other products used to battle coronavirus will face up to two years in prison, following what the economy and finance ministry described as “sharp increases in prices” caused by “hoarding”. From Wednesday, sellers who hoard more than one and a half times their average monthly sales volume will face a maximum sentence of two years in prison or a fine of up to 50 million won (US$42,000). That news followed on the heels of the country beginning to bar entry to non-Korean travellers coming from or through China’s Hubei province. President Moon Jae-in has called on South Korea to work with China to overcome the epidemic, stressing the need to support one’s neighbour “in times of difficulties”. But members from the conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party have condemned the government’s measures as insufficient, calling for a wider entry ban on travellers to and from China. They also accused Moon of “fawning over Beijing” ahead of an expected visit to Seoul by President Xi Jinping this spring. Additional reporting by AFP, Bloomberg, Reuters