A drill was jointly conducted by the Bac Thang Long Hospital and the municipal Department of Health on June 20 in Hanoi to enhance instruction capacity and effective and quick response in the case the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) enters the country.

In the scenario, a man in Dong Anh District returns from the Republic of Korea and is monitored by the district’s Medical Centre. Five days later, he develops a fever and the local medical station promptly alerts the district Medical Centre.

The centre quickly dispatches its mobile team to the man’s house to conduct decontamination of the local environment and take the patient to the Bac Thang Long Hospital, where he is placed in the separation area.

The Hanoi Preventive Medical Centre sends experts to the hospital to assist with taking samples and taking samples to the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology for testing.

During the event, Director of the municipal Department of Health Nguyen Khac Hien highlighted the measures undertaken by the Department and authorities at all levels of the city to prevent the disease from enter and spread in the city as well as in the nation.

MERS-CoV, first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, belongs to a family of corona viruses including SARS, which haunted Asia in 2003.

According to the World Health Organisation, MERS-CoV has so far spread to 26 countries with more than 1,300 patients, at least 466 of whom have died.

In the Republic of Korea, 165 cases have been recorded with 23 deaths.

VNA