Hyundai Acts to Head Off MERS Virus

Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Mong-koo orders senior executives to take immediate action to defend the automaker’s affiliates against contamination by the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome virus that is rampant in South Korea.

Chung says that with more than 100,000 employees in Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors and parts supplier Hyundai Mobis facilities across the nation, the chance of workers contracting the disease is high and needs to be prevented by all available means.

In a Monday meeting it was discussed how a single worker infected with MERS could cause an entire facility to be shut down, possibly with all of its employees having to go into quarantine either in medically supervised locations or in their private residences.

To meet the threat and try to deter it, Hyundai and Kia and all major affiliates have installed body-imaging thermal cameras to screen employees and are distributing tens of thousands of face masks, hand-sanitizing kits and hundreds of digital thermometers, procedural instruction sheets and other deterrent aids.

Chung has ordered senior executives to personally go on site at Hyundai’s major plants and supervise the anti-MERS initiative. Vice Chairman Yoon Yeo-chul has taken charge at the automaker’s main assembly complex in Ulsan and is supervising and inspecting management efforts to comply with the new directives.

Kia President and CEO Park Han-woo is at the company’s main assembly plant in Hwaseong to inspect and supervise the screening work there.

These measures are in effect at administrative as well as production locations, including Hyundai and Kia world headquarters facilities in Seoul.

Every supervisor in every location is required to check every member of his team on a daily basis for high temperature or other symptoms of malaise. Business travel to the Middle East, where the camel-borne disease originated, has been canceled. All functions requiring large gatherings and employee interaction with outsiders also have been cancelled.

A team from the World Health Organization arrived Monday in Korea to assist the medical community in combating spread of the virus.

South Korea ranks third in the world in the number of cases, with 64 people certified to be afflicted with the diseases, six of whom have died. The largest outbreak is in Saudi Arabia.

WHO authorities say there are 1,179 certified MERS cases in the world, including two in the U.S. involving patients who had visited the Middle East.

One member of the WHO team suggests Korea’s unique hospitalization system may be a contributor. In Korea a patient’s family members are expected to stay with them in cots placed beside their beds, and provide them with their meals and personal care, and this may facilitate the spread of the virus.