A toddler who was admitted to Sulianti Saroso Hospital in Jakarta and was suspected of being infected with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) has been declared free from the virus, a test shows.
The Health Ministry general director for disease control and environmental health, Mohammad Subuh, said on Wednesday that a test conducted on the baby had declared that the baby was not infected by the virus.
“The result is negative,” Subuh said as quoted by tempo.co.
He said that the baby was only a suspect because his symptoms emerged 15 days after he returned from a trip to South Korea.
“The symptoms should have appeared within 14 days at most,” he said, adding that the test was still needed to be carried out to ensure that there was not an infection.
The 2-year-old boy is a resident of Teluk Gong, North Jakarta. He just returned from a trip to South Korea with his parents.
They returned to Indonesia on June 6 and the boy was admitted to Sulianti Saroso Hospital two days ago.
Even though most MERS patients are adults over 40, Subuh warned that children may also get infected as recent data shows the age of MERS patients is decreasing every year.
“Before, the virus only infected people around 55 years of age, back in 2014,” he said, adding that the age got as low as 49 this year.
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