SEOUL – A South Korean woman returning home after a trip to Thailand has been infected with a strain of coronavirus that has killed over 400 people in central China’s Wuhan city. She is the 16th confirmed case reported in South Korea

The patient is a 42-year-old woman who arrived in South Korea on Jan 19 and started feeling chills on Jan 25, the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) revealed on Tuesday (Feb 4), the Yonhap news agency reported.

Her condition did not improve despite receiving treatment for several days, so she was tested at a general hospital in Gwangju, 330km south of Seoul, on Monday with the test results coming up positive.

Thailand has reported 19 cases of coronavirus infections.

The KCDC said that she has been placed in quarantine with efforts underway to find out where she has been and whom she met, to see if they too have symptoms.

The latest case, which is likely to be a human-to-human transmission, is the second involving a person who has not been to China but contracted the illness in a foreign country. Last Saturday, a 48-year-old Chinese man, who worked as a guide in Japan, arrived in South Korea and tested positive.

Since Jan 3, the public health authorities had checked 607 people, with 462 testing negative. The agency said 129 are also being checked for potential cases.

It stated that 1,318 people who have been in contact with the confirmed coronavirus patients in South Korea are being closely monitored for symptoms.

Health authorities said that despite the new case, it is ready to discharge its first fully recovered coronavirus patient from a hospital this week as he has made a full recovery and is showing no symptoms of the illness.

The 55-year-old South Korean who had been to Wuhan, returned home on Jan 22 and tested positive for the illness two days later.

He was the second person to have been tested with the virus after the first incident was reported on Jan. 20.

Starting Tuesday, non-Korean travellers coming from or through China’s Hubei province are denied entry into South Korea as the country is widening efforts to combat the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus.

The entry ban applies to all non-Korean travelers who over the past 14 days have stayed or travelled to the Chinese province, the home to Wuhan where the new coronavirus originated.

It is part of South Korea’s first border control measures taken to avert the further advance of the epidemic into the country.

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