The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, has killed about a third of the people known to have caught it. There is no treatment and no vaccine.That’s the bad news.
The relatively good news is that it does not spread all that well.
Most cases so far have been people with other health problems, such as cancer, diabetes or kidney disease, or health care workers who come in close contact with sick patients.
The MERS virus first appeared in September 2012. It’s a member of the coronavirus family, which includes germs that cause the common cold, as well as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
That disease popped up in southern China in 2003, infected about 8,000 people in 29 countries and killed about 800 before it was contained.
The most recent data from the World Health Organization reports 261 MERS infections, including 93 deaths. Other case tallies are higher and put the death toll over 100.
A spike in cases in Saudi Arabia beginning last week has raised worries among health experts that the virus has mutated into a more spreadable form. That would be a danger sign.
But German researchers have examined DNA from some of the new Saudi cases and have not found any significant change in the virus.
That’s good news, but researchers say they need more data to be sure.
And they still do not know why the case count spiked.
“Some of this could be seasonality,” said epidemiologist David Swerdlow, who heads the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s response to MERS. “Some of it could be better surveillance. Some of it could be that there’s a large outbreak ongoing in some health care facilities, perhaps.”
It’s not yet clear where MERS came from originally, but camels are the lead suspect.
Unfortunately, there is a lot about MERS that scientists do not know.
What they do know are lessons that SARS drove home, said Amesh Adalja with the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
“The world is a small place, that borders don’t mean anything,” he said. “And that the total health security of the globe is really tied up in identifying these threats as quickly as possible and then trying to stop them in their tracks.”
He said that’s why health officials around the world are keeping a close eye on MERS.
The relatively good news is that it does not spread all that well.
Most cases so far have been people with other health problems, such as cancer, diabetes or kidney disease, or health care workers who come in close contact with sick patients.
The MERS virus first appeared in September 2012. It’s a member of the coronavirus family, which includes germs that cause the common cold, as well as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
That disease popped up in southern China in 2003, infected about 8,000 people in 29 countries and killed about 800 before it was contained.
The most recent data from the World Health Organization reports 261 MERS infections, including 93 deaths. Other case tallies are higher and put the death toll over 100.
A spike in cases in Saudi Arabia beginning last week has raised worries among health experts that the virus has mutated into a more spreadable form. That would be a danger sign.
But German researchers have examined DNA from some of the new Saudi cases and have not found any significant change in the virus.
That’s good news, but researchers say they need more data to be sure.
And they still do not know why the case count spiked.
“Some of this could be seasonality,” said epidemiologist David Swerdlow, who heads the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s response to MERS. “Some of it could be better surveillance. Some of it could be that there’s a large outbreak ongoing in some health care facilities, perhaps.”
It’s not yet clear where MERS came from originally, but camels are the lead suspect.
Unfortunately, there is a lot about MERS that scientists do not know.
What they do know are lessons that SARS drove home, said Amesh Adalja with the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
“The world is a small place, that borders don’t mean anything,” he said. “And that the total health security of the globe is really tied up in identifying these threats as quickly as possible and then trying to stop them in their tracks.”
He said that’s why health officials around the world are keeping a close eye on MERS.
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