Passengers wearing masks to prevent contracting Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) ride on a travelator upon arrival at Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea, June 2, 2015. 
 
 SEOUL South Korean President Park Geun-hye said on Wednesday everything must be done to stop Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) as fear of the disease shut hundreds of schools and led to corporate giant Samsung calling off a staff conference. 
 
 Five more cases were confirmed on Wednesday taking to 30 the number infected in South Korea since the outbreak began there two weeks ago. Two people have died, fuelling fear in the country with the most cases outside the Middle East, where the disease first appeared. 
 
 While there has been no sustained human-to-human transmission, the nightmare scenario is the virus changes and spreads rapidly, as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) did in 2002-2003 killing about 800 people around the world. 
 
 MERS was first identified in humans in 2012 and is caused by a coronavirus from the same family as the one that triggered SARS. But MERS has a much higher death rate at 38 percent, according to World Health Organization (WHO) figures. 
 
 The WHO puts the total number of MERS cases globally at 1,161, with at least 436 related deaths, the vast majority in the Middle East. There is no cure or vaccine. 
 
 "There are a lot people worried about the situation," Park told an emergency meeting of ministers and top officials. 
 
 "Everything must be done to stop any further spread." 
 
 More than 200 schools were shut on Wednesday, most of them in the province of Gyeonggi, around Seoul, where the first death occurred on Monday. 
 
 South Korea has quarantined or isolated about 1,300 people for possible MERS infection. 
 
 A spokesman of Samsung Group [SAGR.UL], South Korea's top conglomerate, said an orientation conference for new staff scheduled for this week has been postponed in accordance with government instructions on public safety. 
 
 Media in the region has reported tourists cancelling visits to South Korea. 
 
 Though the WHO has not recommended trade or travel restrictions, South Korean border control authorities have put a ban on overseas travel for people isolated for possible infection, a health ministry official said. 
 
 China last week reported its first MERS case, that of a South Korean man who tested positive after breaking a voluntary house quarantine and traveling to Hong Kong and on to mainland China. 
 
 PRESSURE GROWING 
 
 South Korea reported its first two deaths from MERS on Tuesday. 
 
 Of the five new cases, four had been in the same hospital as the first patient, a 68-year-old man who had just returned from a trip to four countries in the Middle East. The other, a 60-year-old man, caught it from another infected person. 
 
 Media said health authorities were conducting tests on an elderly patient who died on Sunday after sharing the same hospital ward with one of the two MERS-infected people who had died. Officials said it was likely she died of existing illness. 
 
 The new cases would bring the total number globally to 1,166, based on World Health Organization (WHO) data, with at least 436 related deaths. 
 
 Pressure is growing for the government to identify the hospitals treating infected patients as fear and confusion mount. 
 
 Public health authorities have insisted it was "helpful" to keep the names of the hospitals from the public, but in an opinion poll published on Wednesday 83 percent of respondents demanded that the government identify them. 
 
 Ian Jones, a specialist virologist at Britain’s University of Reading who has followed MERS since it emerged, said transparency would help in the effort to stop the outbreak. 
 
 "Being open about the cases, their locations and their condition, is best for control - even if this causes some alarm in the short term," he said. 
 
 Some experts have said the 38 percent death rate from MERS might be overstated as patients with little or no symptoms might go undetected. The death rate from SARS was 9 to 12 percent, rising to more than 50 percent for patients over 65. 
 
 Symptoms of MERS can include cough, fever and shortness of breath. It can lead to respiratory failure, the WHO said. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Sohee Kim and Se Young Lee in SEOUL; Writing by Tony Munroe and Jack Kim; Editing by Robert Birsel) ||||| CLOSE Liz Szabo and Taylor Maycan of USA TODAY discuss the latest developments in the MERS outbreak in South Korea. Liz Szabo, Taylor Maycan, Jasper Colt 
 
 A hospital worker takes supplies to a quarantine tent for people possibly infected with the MERS virus at Seoul National University Hospital on June 2, 2015, in Seoul. The Ministry of Health and Welfare of South Korea confirmed two deaths from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) on June 2, 2015. It reported six new cases of MERS, raising the number of confirmed local patients to 25. The first case was confirmed May 20. (Photo: Chung Sung-Jun, Getty Images) 
 
 A MERS outbreak in South Korea — the largest outside Saudi Arabia, where the disease first emerged in 2012 — is likely to grow, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. 
 
 MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, has infected at least 25 people in South Korea and killed two, according to the World Health Organization. 
 
 Doctors have diagnosed five new cases not yet confirmed by the WHO, bringing the total to 30 cases, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who is in contact with South Korean doctors who are treating the patients. 
 
 South Korean officials have isolated 680 people to limit the spread of the disease, which spreads when sick people cough. 
 
 There have been at least 1,154 lab-confirmed cases of MERS worldwide since 2012, along with 431 deaths — a mortality rate of 37%. 
 
 MERS belongs to the same family of viruses as SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which was identified in 2003. Symptoms include fever, cough and shortness of breath, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
 
 The first MERS case in South Korea, confirmed May 20, was in a 68-year-old man who had traveled to four Middle Eastern countries. He developed symptoms May 11 and sought care at two outpatient clinics and two hospitals, the WHO said. 
 
 Doctors didn't isolate the man because he didn't report exposure to MERS, the WHO said. He was exposed to a number of medical staff and hospital patients, as well as their family members and visitors. Health officials are seeking more information about how he was exposed during his Middle Eastern travels, the WHO said. 
 
 The patient infected some patients in the same room, as well as others on the same ward of the hospitals. Some patients became infected after being exposed to the man for as little as five minutes, the WHO said. 
 
 Other patients may have spread the virus at other hospitals before they were diagnosed. 
 
 The first MERS patient in South Korea shared a hospital ward with a 35-year-old man whose son had tuberculosis and who was taking medication to prevent infection. That man developed a fever after being discharged. He visited two hospitals and was given antibiotics by staff who probably assumed his symptoms were caused by tuberculosis, said Daniel Lucey, an adjunct professor of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University Medical Center. That man then visited the hospital again, where he was isolated. 
 
 Another man infected with MERS in South Korea traveled to China on May 26, against his doctor's orders, and was diagnosed a hospital in that country three days later. The man had symptoms of MERS during his travel, the WHO said. 
 
 South Korea's Ministry of Health confirmed that there have been three generations of MERS spread — from the initial patient to a second patient and then to a third patient with no contact with the original patient. 
 
 Given how many people were exposed, "further cases can be expected," the WHO said in a statement. People are more likely to spread the disease when they are very sick and coughing more, Osterholm said. 
 
 The first MERS case in the United States, a health professional who had traveled to Saudi Arabia, was diagnosed in 2014, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
 
 Doctors have long known that coronaviruses such as MERS spread easily in hospitals, Osterholm said. Hospitals helped to spread the SARS outbreak in Toronto in 2003, as sick patients waited in crowded emergency departments, Osterholm said. 
 
 The current South Korean outbreak underscores the need to develop a vaccine against MERS, said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. 
 
 There's a lot that doctors don't know about coronaviruses, such as why some people appear so much more contagious than others. During the 2003 SARS outbreak, doctors called highly infectious people "super spreaders" because they infected dozens of people. Other patients, however, never infect anyone. "These people may have more of the virus, or their coughs may be more efficient at spreading it," Osterholm said. 
 
 Osterholm notes that it's difficult to tell if the South Korean outbreak is spreading any more quickly than usual. In past outbreaks in Saudi Arabia, world health officials often received information long after patients had been treated. 
 
 South Korean officials have been quick to notify international authorities of new developments, allowing people to follow the outbreak "in real time," Osterholm said. 
 
 "There is a lot more transparency here than on the Arabian peninsula," Osterholm said. 
 
 Because South Korea has an advanced medical system, it is better positioned to contain the MERS outbreak than developing nations, Osterholm said. 
 
 "The fact that MERS has spread around the world is not surprising," Osterholm said. "The question is, 'Where is it going to spread to next?' It could very easily come to America. Very easily. Any flight could contain someone who was infected in the Middle East." 
 
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– Two people have died in South Korea and another 30 have tested positive for the virus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome, in what is now considered the largest MERS outbreak outside of the Middle East. Most of the 1,100 MERS cases reported since 2012 have come from the Middle East, where 470 have died. All confirmed cases in South Korea have been found in patients, visitors, or staff members at five hospitals the government has chosen not to name—despite a poll showing 83% of people demand they be identified, Reuters reports. Test results are pending for 99 suspected carriers, while 1,364 are being monitored for symptoms in isolation, the New York Times reports. More than 230 schools were shut down today amid fear of the virus' spread. However, a rep at a crisis management consulting firm says "a lot of fear we see now is rooted in the distrust of the government" after its response to the Sewol ferry disaster. The outbreak has been traced to a 68-year-old man who returned to the country on May 4 after traveling to Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. He visited three clinics on May 11 after developing a fever and cough but didn't disclose his trip; he wasn't properly diagnosed until May 20. A doctor, nurse, and 24 people at a hospital the man visited have since tested positive. A 58-year-old woman who had contact with the patient but was treated for asthma and released, died of MERS on Monday. "We apologize for the inappropriate initial responses," South Korea's health minister says. "We were too relaxed." Third-generation infections have been reported, meaning the initial patient infected a second patient who infected a third, and "further cases can be expected," the WHO says, per USA Today. But "there is no reason for people to panic," an infection control expert says, "and nothing so far that suggests to me that the virus has changed to become more dangerous."