Thailand takes four days to confirm first Mers case

Bangkok

THAI authorities took nearly four days to confirm the country's first case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers), the health ministry said on Friday, a time lag likely to raise fears of a further spread of the deadly virus in Asia.

Thailand confirmed its first case of Mers on Thursday, a 75-year-old businessman from Oman, just as an outbreak in South Korea that began last month and has infected 166 people, and killed 24 of them, appeared to be levelling off.

Thai Public Health Minister Rajata Rajatanavin said that 59 people who had come into contact with the infected man were being monitored. The man arrived in Bangkok on Monday for medical treatment for a heart ailment at a private hospital, Mr Rajata said. He declined to identify the hospital, but a hospital doctor at Thailand's Bumrungrad Hospital in the capital, said on Friday…