Experts in and out of the country urged South Koreans and health authorities to cooperate to combat Middle East respiratory syndrome, suggesting that the virus is not fatal to healthy people and is less contagious than influenza.

“The current hospitals-associated MERS outbreak can be stopped in Korea with sustained cooperation across all of society,” wrote Dr. Daniel Lucey, professor of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University Medical Center, in a contribution article published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Sunday.

“This cooperation includes a comprehensive rapid public health response, effective outbreak communication with the public and transparency from both organizational leaders and individuals in quarantine,” he said.

Lucey also said that MERS can cause “a life-threatening pneumonia” in people who suffer from lung disease, kidney disease, immunodeficiency or diabetes.

“In most persons without the four pre-existing conditions, the MERS virus causes less severe or mild illness, or even no symptoms at all.”

The virus found from at least two Korean patients also didn’t show any evidence of a mutation, he noted. If mutated, it would make the virus more contagious than any other MERS virus in the Middle East, he added.

Seo Jeong-wook, pathology professor at Seoul National University, pointed out that the mortality rate of the disease is lower than other diseases and that it passes away like influenza.

In his essay posted online, the professor urged the authorities to expand the national budget on quarantine instruments and procedures in order to prepare for another outbreak of the disease in the near future.

“Even if we stop MERS, chances are high that the disease could spread around this time next year,” he said.

“MERS won’t be exterminated, other similar forms of the disease could appear.”

Last week, Nature also said in its article that experts don’t consider MERS outbreak in South Korea to have pandemic potential or expect it to be transmitted to general communities.

The U.S. magazine stressed that MERS mainly spreads in hospitals, and can be controlled by traditional quarantine measures because it spreads “very poorly between people,” unlike severe acute respiratory syndrome. “The coronavirus that caused SARS had evolved the ability to spread easily between people. MERS CoV by contrast has not,” it said.

By Cho Chung-un (christory@heraldcorp.com)