Jordan reports its 5th MERS death

AMMAN - A man has died in Jordan after being infected with the MERS virus, the government said Monday, on the eve of a World Health Organisation emergency meeting on the disease.

The latest death brings to five the number of fatalities in Jordan from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus since it first emerged in 2012.

The man, in his 50s, worked in a private hospital and died on Sunday, the health ministry said.

The announcement came after Saudi Arabia on Sunday reported that three new deaths from MERS had taken its death toll from the disease to 142.

MERS has now infected 483 people in the Gulf kingdom since it first appeared in 2012, accounting for the vast majority of the 496 cases registered worldwide.

It is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003, infecting 8,273 people and killing nearly 800.

Like SARS, it appears to cause a lung infection, with patients suffering coughing, breathing difficulties and a temperature, but MERS differs in that it also causes rapid kidney failure.

Although most MERS infections have been in Saudi Arabia, cases have also been recorded in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and even the United States.

Most cases outside Saudi Arabia involve people who had travelled to the kingdom or worked there, often as medical staff.

The UN's health agency WHO is to hold an emergency meeting Tuesday to discuss the worrying spread of MERS.

"The increase in the number of cases in different countries raises a number of questions," WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said on Friday, without elaborating.

source: interaksyon.com

Saudi hospital head sacked as MERS death toll hits 117

RIYADH - Saudi Arabia's acting health minister has announced the sacking of the head of a Jeddah hospital where a spike in MERS infections among medical staff sparked panic among the public.

The move, which Adel Fakieh published on Twitter late Tuesday, came after he inspected King Fahd Hospital's emergency department in the Red Sea city.

Hours after the news, health officials announced two more deaths from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, bringing the toll to 117.


The victims were a 68-year-old woman in Jeddah, the kingdom's commercial capital, and a 60-year-old man died in Medina.

The Jeddah hospital was temporarily shut last month after several medics were infected by MERS.

And panic at the Red Sea city's main hospital prompted at least four doctors to resign in mid-April after they refused to treat MERS patients for fear of infection.

Nearly a week later, Riyadh dismissed the health minister and appointed Fakieh, who is labour minister, to take over the health portfolio on an acting basis.

Fakieh, who has repeatedly promised "transparency" over MERS, said he has replaced the head of the hospital and his assistants.

"The new team will immediately take up its duties," he tweeted, adding that "the ministry will take all decisive measures to achieve its goals in preserving the health of members of society."

Saudi Arabia has reported 431 infections since MERS first appeared in its eastern region in September 2012 before spreading across the kingdom.

Fakieh said last week that measures to contain the spread of MERS "will be announced in the coming days," as Western experts and representatives of the World Health Organisation met in Riyadh.

The WHO said Wednesday that a team of its experts completed a five-day mission to the kingdom "to assist the national health authorities to assess the recent increase in the number of people infected" in Jeddah.

Experts visited two main hospitals there and have found that the increase in cases are "due to breaches in WHO's recommended infection prevention and control measures," the UN organisation said.

It said that the recent increase in numbers of infections does not suggest a "significant change in the transmissibility of the virus."

So far, there is no evidence "of sustained human-to-human transmission in the community and the transmission pattern overall remained unchange," said WHO.

"The majority of human-to-human infections occurred in health care facilities," it said, adding that "one quarter of all cases have been health care workers."

The team called for improving "knowledge and attitudes" of health care workers about MERS.

MERS is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died.

There are no vaccines or antiviral treatments for MERS, a disease with a mortality rate of more than 40 percent that experts are still struggling to understand.

Some research has suggested that camels are a likely source of the virus.

source: interaksyon.com

Bat linked to mysterious MERS virus

WASHINGTON - A bat has been linked to the mysterious and at times fatal MERS coronavirus plaguing the Middle East, according to a new study.

Researchers said they detected a 100 percent genetic match in an insect-eating bat close to the home of the first known victim of the disease in Saudi Arabia.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome has killed 47 people worldwide, 39 of them in Saudi Arabia.

"There have been several reports of finding MERS-like viruses in animals. None were a genetic match," said Ian Lipkin, a co-author of the study and head of Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity.

"In this case we have a virus in an animal that is identical in sequence to the virus found in the first human case," he said in a statement. "Importantly, it's coming from the vicinity of that first case."

The findings of the study, which also involved researchers from the EcoHealth Alliance and Saudi Arabia's health ministry, were published online late Wednesday in the "Emerging Infectious Diseases" journal of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

MERS is considered a cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003.

Like SARS, it is thought to have jumped from animals to humans, and shares the former's flu-like symptoms -- but differs by causing kidney failure.

Between October 2012 and April 2013, researchers collected more than a thousand samples from seven bat species in regions of Saudi Arabia where MERS cases were identified.

After a series of analyses, a fecal sample taken from an Egyptian Tom Bat collected within several kilometers of the home of the first known MERS victim "contained sequences of a virus identical to those recovered" from that person.

But "there is no evidence of direct exposure to bats in the majority of human cases of MERS," said Ziad Memish, Saudi Arabia's deputy health minister and the study's lead author.

"Given that human-to-human transmission is inefficient, we speculate that an as-yet-to-be determined intermediate host plays a critical role in human disease."

source: interaksyon.com