Eight new cases of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, were confirmed by the South Korean health ministry Tuesday. The total number of infected cases is now 95. However, the ministry said the daily new cases have fallen sharply from a reported 23 the previous day.

The ministry added that another MERS-infected patient has died. The new death is the seventh since the South Korean outbreak began in May.

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The new death is of a 68-year-old woman who already had a heart ailment. She previously stayed in an emergency room in a hospital in Seoul where previous confirmed cases of the virus have been traced.

According to the ministry, the three cases reported Tuesday came from the same emergency room as the deceased patient. The emergency room reportedly also has 37 of the 95 cases of MERS in the country.

All cases of infection were from health care facilities.

Since news of the outbreak, 2,500 people have been placed under quarantine, whether or not they have had contact with MERS patients. Those put under quarantine were placed in hospitals, but most are at home. These people are being tracked by authorities through mobile phones so they would not violate their quarantine.

President Park Geun-hye of South Korea has called the nation to take all-out efforts in eradicating the spread of the virus, according to Reuters.

The MERS outbreak in South Korea began last month when a 68-year-old businessman went home from a Middle East trip. He went to doctors coughing and wheezing and they thought the symptoms were of pneumonia. It took four hospitals and nine days before officials suspected the man of having something far more deadly and contagious.

Due to the late diagnosis, health officials said the man was able to infect dozens, who later became potential carriers, thus further spreading the virus, according to The New York Times.

The total number of MERS cases in the world has now grown to 1,244 because of the outbreak in South Korea, according to a data from the World Health Organization. At least 446 have died.

South Korea has fast become the second country in the world with the highest MERS-infection count, trailing just behind Saudi Arabia, according to a European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control data.

There remains no known cure or vaccine for the virus, reported CNBC. However, healthcare experts said that MERS is not a worldwide threat.

"For a virus to go pandemic, it must be able to spread easily between people... but MERS-CoV is primarily an animal virus," wrote Declan Butler, a senior reporter of renowned science magazine Nature, in an article last Friday.

He added that MERS can only be spread in hospitals. Public-health measures can still maintain control of the virus, to which South Korea is taking aggressive action.

TagsMERS south korea, MERS, MERS outbreak, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, WHO