Hit by the disease so far as five new cases reported

fatalities so far as another patient hit

by the virus dies

too, to continue to go on with investment, production and management activities as normal and particularly help with ensuring that consumers don’t hold back from spending money,” she told senior aides.

The Health Ministry said it would quarantine or put under observation about 4,000 people who may have been exposed to Mers at a prominent Seoul hospital, the Samsung Medical Centre, which has suspended most services.

But many in that group are among the 5,216 already under quarantine, most of them at home and some in hospitals.

The Samsung hospital said on Sunday it was suspending all nonemergency surgery and would take no new patients after more than 70 cases were traced to it, including a worker who was found to have been in contact with more than 200 people.

Deputy Prime Minister Choi Kyung-hwan told parliament that the next two days would be a watershed period for the outbreak, as the two-week incubation period for the initial wave of cases traced to the Samsung hospital comes to an end.

Choi, who is also the finance minister, said the government was considering a possible supplementary budget to bolster the economy, Asia’s fourth-biggest.

At Myoungin Elementary School in the city of Suwon, south of Seoul, teachers greeted students at the gate for the first time in 10 days, taking temperatures and sending home