Blame camels for the persistence of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, first identified in a Saudi Arabian man in 2012, says Michael Osterholm, director of CIDRAP at the University of Minnesota and author of “Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs.” MERS is a…
No one—or, no sane one—disputes the value of vaccines, but how to have them developed and ready to stop unexpected outbreaks like Ebola? The Wellcome Trust, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and the government of Norway offer a solution.…
A Saudi hospital initially missed a MERS case, ultimately exposing 49 other patients and staff to the disease, according to the WHO. The 49-year-old woman, who first went to the hospital for an unrelated condition, was not isolated and shared a room. Previously, WHO…
Camels are gregarious, but “quite stubborn,” reports Joaquim Segalés, director of the Research Center for Animal Health in Barcelona, who conducted an experimental vaccine study involving Middle East respiratory syndrome, better known as MERS.
MERS-CoV has spread rapidly across much of the Middle East, but no quantitative mapping of transmission risk has been developed—until now. Researchers from University of Kansas and Ain Shams University (Egypt) have analyzed the environmental circumstances that have led to…
More than 3 years after MERS was reported in Saudi Arabia, the first case control study on disease risk factors indicates that direct and indirect contact with camels heightened a person’s chances of developing the disease.
A public health collaboration may be in the works between the US and Saudi Arabia to develop a MERS vaccine in advance of a potential outbreak. WHO director-general Margaret Chan said that Saudi Health Minister Khaled al-Falih and US public health officials have…
While the WHO’s Emergency Committee express a “heightened sense of concern” about the MERS outbreak in Asia and the Middle East, they don’t consider the situation an international emergency. At their recent meeting, the Committee reviewed the status of events provided by…
The global health community is warily watching the Hajj pilgrimage, wondering whether this is the year when religion and a new virus—namely MERS—will collide for a big, deadly outbreak. But fears about a deadly outbreak may be overblown, explains health reporter Julia…
The latest report of 13 MERS cases in Saudi Arabia, tied to a Riyadh hospital outbreak, points to ongoing lapses in infection control, according to an analysis by Crawford Kilian—who isn’t shy about lambasting the nation’s Ministry of Health (MoH) for the delayed trickle of…
