A 16-year-old male middle school student from Seoul has been confirmed to have contracted Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), becoming the nation’s first teenager infected with the deadly virus.
 
Since first showing symptoms last Monday, doctors placed him under quarantine at Samsung Medical Center in Seoul. 

Since his surgery late last month, he had been at the hospital where almost 900 medical staff and patients were possibly exposed to the nation's 14th confirmed MERS patient who stayed there for three days.
 
The Education Ministry said that no other students have contracted the disease from the teen.
 
The number of schools that have closed due to the MERS outbreak is continuously climbing after the education offices of Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Daejeon city ordered schools to suspend classes.
 
The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education ordered some 120 kindergartens and elementary schools in the districts of Gangnam and Seocho to close until Wednesday. The office also instructed all students to continuously monitor their temperatures.
 
In seven regions in Gyeonggi Province, including Suwon and Yongin, roughly 12-hundred kindergartens, elementary, middle and high schools as well as schools for children with disabilities have suspended classes until Friday. In Daejeon, around 110 kindergartens and elementary schools have temporarily closed.
 
A total of more than 19-hundred schools have closed across the nation due to the outbreak.

As of Monday afternoon, a total of six people have died due to the disease and 87 have been confirmed to have contracted the virus.