South Korea to provide foreign tourists with free MERS insurance
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Jul 2015
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) will provide free insurance policies to foreign tourists to cover their entire medical and travelling expenses if they contract the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus while visiting the country, reported The Korea Times.
The free insurance will be offered to all foreign tourists upon entering the country. This was announced in a set of measures on 15 June to relieve foreign tourists’ concerns over the MERS outbreak in South Korea, which is the largest so far outside Saudi Arabia. South Korea’s tourism industry has been badly affected by the outbreak, with around 108,100 cancelling flight tickets to the country as of 14 June.
Other measures include placing sterilising products, such as hand sanitisers, at the country’s tourist attractions and 2,200 certified tourist companies as well as 5,000 tour buses. The MCST will also operate a 24-hour call centre for foreigners to inform them of nearby hospitals that operate emergency rooms to deal with suspected MERS cases.
In order to prevent concerns and rumours from spreading further, the Ministry will provide information about the latest situation and safety rules concerning MERS on the state-run tour portal and on social networking services such as Facebook.
As of 17 June, there were 162 infections and 20 deaths, while the number of people quarantined for possible infection of MERS jumped to more than 6,500.