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"I'm fine," a Chinese girl studying in South Korea told her families on Wednesday, trying to cool down their anxiety as rampant MERS closes schools and sees more masked faces across the streets in the Asian country.
Most of the overseas students in Pyongtaek University in the city of the same name 60 km south of Seoul were from China, said Park Ki-cheol, head of the university's international education school.
The outbreak of MERS, or the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, was not so lethal as people imagined here in Pyongtaek, a city of some 400,000 population, according to Park.
However, schools were suspended for caution at the university and all local students were back home, he said, adding that he now lived on campus to stay with the remaining overseas students.
Two Chinese students wearing face masks appeared quite relaxed as they said life was largely unchanged for them apart from some pre-cautious measures.
The university authorities have seen to it that their temperature was taken twice a day, they said, adding that most of the 200 Chinese students in the university felt the same as them.
They admitted their families back in China were quite worried as two people had been killed and confirmed cases were on the rise.
"We received a lot of calls at home, and made no small efforts to calm them down," they said.
South Korea reported five additional MERS cases Thursday, raising the number of confirmed cases to 35. As of Wednesday, more than 1,300 people had been put in quarantine.
In Pyongtaek, schools were suspended and a hospital housing multiple confirmed patients was now closed and its outpatient quarter was empty. A notice on its gate reads: "Hospital temporarily closed to prevent epidemic spread."
According to media report, a total of 544 schools were on or ready for suspension, including 439 in the Kyonggi-do area around the capital city.
A pharmacist working near the hospital said rising confirmed and quarantined cases were creating panics among the people. He believed the government was not doing enough at the every beginning of the outbreak.
Among the five new cases reported on Thursday were two infected from the 14th and 16th patients, who had been infected from the first patient. The tertiary infection totaled five as the two new cases were added.
The two new tertiary contagions increased fears among the public. The N95 facial masks believed to be able to fend off the disease have been sold out in many pharmacies in Seoul and more people hid their faces behind the masks in the increasingly scarcely populated public areas.
