From NewScientist Threatwatch | April 17, 2014 by Deborah Mckenzie
This news reminds us of the movie "Outbreak" Only the "Outbreak" movie is about Ebolah virus. It is active now in Africa in Guinea and has killed a number
There are now two confirmed cases of MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) in Malaysia and Philippines One Filipino died in Saudi on April 10, 2014. There is another Filipino a male nurse and is in the hospital MERS surfaced in KSA in February 2012
Is it an outbreak?
It has for infected 244 and killed 76. 49 new cases have been reported in last 6 days alone (since April 20, 2014) What is worrisome about the disease is its silent spread; most of the victims has no known contact. The disease affects mostly health workers and are on protest.
The situation is critical because of the forthcoming Hajj in Jeddah where there will be a huge crowd huge #of people.
MERS coronavirus resides in camels
Could this be similar to SARS from Taiwan?
Could this spread worlwide? Is this a cause for concern?
Dyaske: "Corona"virus. I thought his impeachment was over? Ha6
he Philippines and Malaysia have identified their first-ever MERS cases. Meanwhile, cases of the respiratory virus have surged sharply in Saudi Arabia and neighbouring countries since February; Saudi doctors have resigned as healthcare workers are hit with the virus; and the price of surgical masks and garlic, reputedly an anti-viral, have reportedly risen in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where 43 people have been struck by the virus since March.
MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) surfaced in Saudi Arabia in 2012, and it has certainly been hitting the headlines lately. Is it about to hit the fan, too, and go global?
Not just yet – but it is doing worrying
things: striking healthcare workers and pilgrims, hitching rides on
commercial flights, and perhaps travelling incognito.
The cases in Malaysia and the Philippines are unconnected but both, coincidentally, were reported yesterday. The virus is not at large in those countries. Both people were infected in the Arabian peninsula.
A Filipino hospital worker in Abu Dhabi,
in the United Arab Emirates, fell ill with MERS and died there on 10
April. Health authorities tested the people the victim had been in
contact with and found 10 more infected healthcare workers.
One of them, a Filipino male nurse, had
flown back to the Philippines on 15 April. He and nine local contacts in
the Philippines are in quarantine, and so far none has shown any
symptoms. But that's another worrying thing: of the 10 who tested
positive for the MERS virus in Abu Dhabi, three had only mild disease,
and five had no symptoms at all. Two are in hospital.
Silent spread
The virus is turning up in many of the people
being tested because they are contacts of known cases, but many of
these people do not themselves develop the severe pneumonia that has
killed 93 of the 243 known cases of MERS. That means it is probably
infecting a lot more people than we know about.
That may be of little importance from an
epidemiological perspective if people with mild or asymptomatic
infections cannot spread the disease any further. There's no evidence
that they can – but many MERS cases had no contact with known cases
before they fell ill, suggesting there may be such silent spread.
Much will be resolved when epidemiologists
work out whether the virus really does come from camels. Many – though
not all – cases not clearly linked to other sick humans had contact with
camels before falling ill. Recent research suggests camels may be the normal home of the virus, rather than merely passing it on from another animal.
The case of the Filipino healthcare worker
is just one of the large proportion of MERS cases among healthcare
professionals. In Jeddah, 38 cases have been diagnosed
in a clustered outbreak that began in late March, many of them
healthcare workers. Four doctors at the King Fahad Hospital have tendered their resignations in protest, and authorities are offering danger pay to medical staff who treat people with MERS.
This is uneasily reminiscent of the virus's Chinese cousin, SARS,
which spread worldwide in 2003, and struck healthcare workers in
particular. This threat is amplified in the Arabian peninsula, where
many healthcare workers are foreign guest-workers – who, like the
Filipino nurse, return to their home countries carrying the virus with
them. This week, Saudi health authorities stated that 36 of the
country's first 194 cases were foreigners.
Pilgrim risk
The Malaysian case raises another risk. The
54-year-old man had just performed umrah, the minor Muslim pilgrimage to
Mecca outside the holy month of Ramadan: he flew from Jeddah, the site
of the current outbreak, and died 13 April in Johor state, near
Singapore. Malaysian authorities are trying to trace
other passengers on Turkish Airlines TK93 from Jeddah to Istanbul and
TK60, from Istanbul to Kuala Lumpur on March 29. Some of the 64 people reportedly quarantined in the man's home town are said to have symptoms.
Occasional sick travellers – also
confirmed in the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Tunisia – have not so
far spawned secondary outbreaks. What is worrying about the Malaysian
case is that he was a pilgrim. From the beginning,
public health officials have worried that most MERS has been in Saudi
Arabia, which welcomes 3 million pilgrims annually for the hajj, and
comparable numbers for umrah during the rest of the year.
The Saudis have been very careful: for the
last hajj they recommended that elderly or unwell would-be pilgrims
stay home instead, and announced afterwards that no cases of MERS were
found in any pilgrims. Now, that is no longer true – and in fact it may
not have been true before, either, as many pilgrims return to countries
considerably less medically advanced than Malaysia. Pilgrims who return
with the virus might fall ill or spread it silently without being
tested. As with many things about MERS, whether that is happening
remains a mystery for now – an increasingly worrying one.
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