The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education claimed Monday it was not getting direct information from the health authorities despite the first confirmed infection of a teenager earlier in the day.
“Our only source of information are local public health centers and the Education Ministry. We don’t have specific details of the situation,” said an official from Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education. “The health authorities tell us nothing.”
The complaint, if true, implied that the SMOE — entrusted with the task of ensuring the well-being of all students attending public institutes in the city — is being kept in the relative dark concerning students’ health status amid an ongoing outbreak. It sparked concerns about its capacity to properly deal with the MERS situation, after the country’s first student patient was confirmed earlier in the day.
Although the ministry released a press release confirming that the teen patient — a 16-year-old high schooler — is attending a Seoul-based high school, the SMOE said it was not even sure of the relevant facts.
The officials said they learned about the student patient by inquiring at the health center in Gangnam-gu, southern Seoul, where he was diagnosed with the disease.
One SMOE official said that she learned other details of the teen patient in question through media reports that were collected in official documents — which were used in turn to brief the media.
“I looked it up in the news. The health authorities are not telling us anything,” she said.
“Regarding MERS patients, neither the Education Ministry nor local education offices have due information. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and the Health Ministry hold the authorities. The ministry tells us the information about the patient,” said a high-ranking official from the Education Ministry.
There have been concerns that such monopoly of information could be a recipe for disaster, as the local education office — which has the authority to cancel classes at times of high risk of contagion — is left in the dark about the MERS situation in schools.
Under the current system, health authorities alert the patients with their diagnosis. Each student is to report his or her case to the school, which in turn reports it to local education offices.
But there is no regulation that mandates students to report one’s case to the school, meaning the school — and consequently the education offices — runs the risk of not keeping accurate track of a possible MERS outbreak among its students.
By Yoon Min-sik (minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)
