Tag Archives: MERS

Ten die of MERS in Saudi Arabia among 32 cases in last three months: WHO

The headquarters of the World Health Organization are pictured in Geneva

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – Ten people have died among 32 infected with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Saudi Arabia since June in a series of clusters of the viral disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

The latest cases, recorded between June 1 and September 16, bring the global total of laboratory-confirmed MERS cases to 2,254, with 800 deaths, the United Nations agency said in a “disease outbreak” statement on its website.

MERS first emerged in humans in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and has since spread to cause outbreaks in dozens of countries around the world. The vast majority of the cases – around 1,800 of them – have been in Saudi Arabia.

The virus MERS can cause severe respiratory disease in people and kills one in three of those it infects. It is thought to be carried by camels and comes from the same family as the coronavirus that caused China’s deadly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003.

Most of the known human-to-human transmission of the disease has occurred in healthcare settings, and the WHO has warned hospitals and medical workers to take stringent precautions to stop the disease from spreading.

The WHO said these latest cases did not change its overall assessment that the virus poses a risk of spreading both within and beyond the Middle East.

“WHO expects that additional cases … will be reported from the Middle East, and that cases will continue to be exported to other countries,” its statement said.

The disease spread into South Korea in 2015 and killed 38 people in a major outbreak. And in its first case in three years, South Korea said last month that a 61-year-old man had been diagnosed with MERS.

Among the 32 latest Saudi cases, 12 were part of “five distinct clusters”, the WHO said. Four of these were within households or families, and the fifth was in a hospital in Buraidah, a city in Qassim Province north of the capital Riyadh.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, Editing by William Maclean)

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Could Be Airborne

The deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) could be more dangerous than scientists had been lead to believe after air samples showed airborne evidence of the virus.

Researchers with King Fahd Medical Research Center in Saudi Arabia released a paper about air samples taken from the barn of a camel that had been infected with the virus.  The owner of the camel contracted MERS and died.

The scientists say that a second camel tested positive for the virus after the man’s death and that air samples within the barn showed one strain of MERS RNA.

The virus in the same was identical to the virus in the first camel and the virus in the human victim.

American researchers were quick to say that just because they found the virus in the air it doesn’t mean that it’s automatically transmitted via airborne particle.

“What they say is that virus particles can be airborne, but it’s premature to conclude that MERS is transmitted through aerosols,” Dr. Mark Denison, a professor of pathology, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine told CNN.  “I could take billions of particles of dead viruses and could still find the RNA. That doesn’t mean that there are infectious aerosols,” Denison said.

Doctors Say Man Who Contracted MERS In America “Not Contagious”

Doctors say tests on an Illinois man who contracted the deadly MERS virus from an Indiana man who was the United States’ first victim of the virus is not able to spread the disease to others.

“The second round of test results from oral and nasal swabs show the Illinois resident is not infectious,” Dr. LaMar Hasbrouck of the Illinois Department of Public Health.  “What this means is, although the resident was infected at one time, if he sneezes or coughs, the virus is not in his nose or mouth and therefore cannot be spread to others.”

Health officials say the Illinois man likely contracted the virus from the Indiana patient during a 40-minute business meeting where the two shared nothing more than a single handshake.  It is the first person-to-person transmission of the virus confirmed in the United States.

Dr. Hasbrouck said the virus is still so new that it’s not known all the ways the virus can be transmitted.  He said that many other people also had contact with the Indiana patient and all of them have tested negative for MERS.

MERS Confirmed In United States

The Centers for Disease Control has confirmed the deadly MERS virus has reached the United States.

The patient was found in Indiana.  He had traveled from Saudi Arabia to London and then to Chicago where he entered the country through O’Hare International Airport.  The male patient reportedly went to the hospital for treatment after experiencing shortness of breath on April 28th.

“The CDC, IDPH and CDPH do not consider passengers on the flight or bus to be close contacts of the patient and therefore are not at high risk,” CDC Director Dr. LaMar Hasbrouk said in a news release.

The U.S. now the 14th nation in the world to have reported cases of the killer virus.

The CDC is trying to assuage any fears among the public of an outbreak of the virus.

“It is understandable that some may be concerned about this situation, but this first U.S. case of MERS-CoV infection represents a very low risk to the general public,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, assistant surgeon general and director of CDC’s National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases.

The CDC has not yet issued a travel health warning for Saudi Arabia as Egypt has recently done because of the MERS outbreak.

MERS Now Spread Across Entire Middle East

The deadly MERS virus, originally found in Saudi Arabia and only in a few cases outside that nation, is now considered as having spread across the entire Middle East.

Egypt has issued a travel warning to Saudi Arabia after an Egyptian man has been found to have the fatal virus.  Over 100 people have died after contracting the killer disease with a mortality rate over 45%.

The news of the travel warning comes ahead of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca by millions of Muslims around the world.

Egypt’s warning also includes the rare step of telling those with children under 15, adults over 65, pregnant women and anyone who suffers from respiratory diseases to not make the pilgrimage to Mecca this year.

Dr. Ala Alwan of the World Health Organization said the most concerning thing is that most of the cases now have been confirmed as human-to-human transmission rather than from bats or camels.

“Approximately 75 per cent of the recently reported cases are secondary cases, meaning that they are considered to have acquired the infection from another case through human-to-human transmission,” Dr Ala Alwan wrote in a statement.

Saudi Arabia Fires Health Minister After MERS Outbreak

Saudi Arabia fired Health Minister Abdullah al-Rabiah in the mist of the largest outbreak of the killer MERS virus since its discovery two years ago.

The news comes as two more people were confirmed to have died from the virus.  A 73-year-old Saudi man died in Riyadh and a 54-year-old man in Jeddah died on Monday.

Saudi Arabia has been dealing with a major outbreak of the virus with over 20 infections discovered in the last week.  The country’s death toll climbed to 83 and the total number of cases jumped to 261.  The outbreak of the last week was more than ten percent of the total cases.

The now-former Health Minister had said on Monday he didn’t know why there was a sudden rise in the virus other than noting there was a small increase the previous April.

The World Health Organization confirmed the first cases of the virus in Southeast Asia.  There is no vaccine for MERS.

Six New Cases Of MERS Emerge

Six new cases of the deadly MERS virus have appeared in the Middle East.

Five people in Saudi Arabia and one person in the United Arab Emirates have been infected with MERS according to the World Health Organization.  One of the patients has died, bringing the death toll from the virus to 74 of 176 confirmed cases.

The WHO said the case in the United Arab Emirates was a woman married to a man who has been previously diagnosed with the disease.  She is being kept in isolation in a hospital despite not showing any adverse symptoms.

Officials in the region are citing new research showing transfer between camels and humans in a warning telling people at risk for the virus to avoid barns and farms.

 

Scientists Discover Possible Transmission Link For MERS

Scientists in Saudi Arabia believe they may have finally been able to confirm their theory that the MERS virus transmits to humans from camels.

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus was discovered in a camel owned by a MERS victim according to the Saudi health ministry. DNA testing on the virus is being conducted to see if the virus is the same strain in both the camel and the human victim.

The virus causes pneumonia like symptoms but also produces very rapid and fatal kidney disease. The mortality rate for MERS is over 40 percent.

The virus is similar to the SARS virus that caused a worldwide outbreak in 2002-2003 that killed 775 people.

Scientists Find Possible Origin Of SARS Virus

Researchers announced they have found two bat viruses closely related to SARS.

The scientists said that the viruses infect cells in the same manner that SARS infects human cells. The discovery suggests that SARS originated in bats and transfer directly into humans rather than through some intermediary animal.

The bat viruses are 95% genetically matched to SARS and could lead to rapid development of vaccines and drugs to combat the deadly disease.

The SARS outbreak between November 2002 and July 2003 resulted in more than 8,000 worldwide cases with 770 deaths. The virus was a forerunner of the MERS virus that was discovered in the middle east that has a mortality rate close to 43%.

The World Health Organization has declared MERS a “threat to the entire world.”