Four new cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome were confirmed Friday in South Korea, bringing the total number of cases to 126.
One of the 126, a South Korean male, is being monitored by Chinese authorities since he arrived in the Chinese city of Guangdong in late May.
The outbreak is the biggest outside of Saudi Arabia, where the little-understood virus was first detected in 2012.
So far, 11 people in South Korea have died after contracting MERS and more than 3,800 people have been placed under quarantine. By Friday, 1,249 people have been released from quarantine after they tested negative for MERS.
The situation led South Korea's central bank to unexpectedly cut interest rates Thursday, out of concern that an outbreak of MERS will dampen growth and spending.
The Bank of Korea trimmed its key interest rate a quarter percentage point to 1.5% due to "concerns following the MERS outbreak about contractions in domestic demand activities such as consumption and in economic sentiment," a statement read.
A day earlier, President Park Geun-hye's office announced that she had canceled her trip scheduled for Sunday to the United States in order to address the situation.
