Keiji Fukuda (L), an assistant director-general of the World Health Organization who is leading a delegation of medical experts to South Korea, speaks during the first meeting of a joint response team with South Korean officials at the government complex in Sejong, South Korea on June 9, 2015. South... (Associated Press) 
 
 South Korean elementary school students wear masks as a precaution against the MERS, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, virus as they attend a lesson at an elementary school in Busan, South Korea, Tuesday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 The biggest outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outside the region where it was first seen in 2012 was introduced to South Korea last month by a 68-year-old man who had traveled to Saudi Arabia and other nearby countries. When he got sick after his return to South Korea, he visited several hospitals and clinics, where dozens of other patients and hospital workers were infected before officials found he had MERS. There has been widespread fear here of the poorly understood disease, which has no vaccine and as much as a 40 percent mortality rate. appeared to be less concerned, saying that it was not advising special actions at ports and airports in South Korea or travel or trade restrictions, “given the lack of evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission in the community.” 
 
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 Alison Clements-Hunt, a spokeswoman for the health organization, said that the virus pattern found in South Korea was in line with those monitored elsewhere. Authorities say the first MERS patient didn't reveal his Saudi Arabia trip to doctors until he arrived at the Seoul-based Samsung Medical Center after being treated at three other hospitals, including St. Mary's Hospital in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul. The health ministry said it will fully fund the cost of diagnosis and treatment for those who have contracted the disease, as well as those in quarantine as suspected cases. The testing on a virus sample in South Korea “shows nothing alarming in terms of mutations and change in what would be the transmissibility of the virus.” 
 
 Nonetheless, she said the organization was sending a team of experts to South Korea. With 95 confirmed cases, South Korea now has the second-largest number of people diagnosed with the disease after Saudi Arabia, which has reported over 1,000 cases since it reported the world's first case in 2012.
– When a 68-year-old man visited a clinic in Asan, South Korea, on May 12, and again two and three days later, doctors were stumped by his coughing and wheezing. He was referred to a larger hospital in Pyeongtaek, then a smaller one in Seoul before X-rays on May 17 suggested he had pneumonia, reports the New York Times. Still, he was referred once more to one of the country's largest hospitals, the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul. There, doctors learned he hadn't just visited Bahrain on a recent trip as he had previously disclosed, but also the UAE and Saudi Arabia, the Wall Street Journal reports. (The patient's wife says he had trouble communicating with a high fever.) A test confirmed on May 20 he had the highly contagious MERS virus. Since then, 37 people at the Pyeongtaek hospital have tested positive. "It must have been a period when the virus was most active in him and he was coughing out a lot of virus droplets," a doctor says of the man considered the first patient in South Korea's outbreak. One of the sick from Pyeongtaek spent days in the Samsung Medical Center's ER, where another 35 were infected. South Korea has so far identified 95 total cases at 29 hospitals, including eight new cases today, reports Yonhap News. Seven have died, though all had preexisting health issues. Almost 3,000 are under quarantine, including 700 who were in the crowded Samsung Medical Center ER when the carrier arrived, while 2,200 schools have been closed, the AP reports. Authorities, however, say the virus may have peaked. Its incubation period—between five and 14 days—for the first patient has ended, meaning no other cases should arise in connection with that patient. The incubation period for the other carriers ends around Friday. "This week may be very crucial to overcoming MERS," the prime minister says. "The government will mobilize all available resources and necessary budget to help eradicate the disease."