Via Reuters: Two
more die in Saudi Arabia from MERS coronavirus. Excerpt:
Two more people have died of the SARS-like coronavirus MERS, Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry said, bringing to 38 the number of deaths from the disease inside the country shortly before Islam's Ramadan fast when many pilgrims visit.
A two-year-old child died in Jeddah and a 53-year-old man died in Eastern Province, where the outbreak has been concentrated, the ministry said late on Saturday in a statement on its website. Four people have died outside the kingdom.
The ministry said another three people had been confirmed as being infected with Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), bringing the total number of confirmed cases inside the kingdom to 65 since it was identified a year ago.
On Friday the World Health Organization said MERS, which can cause fever, coughing and pneumonia, had not yet reached pandemic potential and may simply die out.
Ramadan, Islam's fasting month, is expected to start in Saudi Arabia on Monday night and is traditionally a time when hundreds of thousands of Muslims come to Mecca for umrah, a pilgrimage that can be carried out at any time of year.
Millions are also expected to travel to Mecca for the main pilgrimage, haj, that will take place in October, although the authorities have cut the number of visas this year, citing safety concerns over expansion work at the main mosque site.The Ministry of Health's own statement is here. Arab News also has the story. It mentions that one of the three new cases is a health worker. Saudi Gazette spins the story to the bright side, stating that "only three" new cases have been reported.
Via his blog Virology Down Under, Dr. Ian Mackay
muses on MERS-CoV cases at ~ 80.
Sometimes we learn where a case has been identified, or we learn the age of a patient, but we never get a clear, progressive description of the progress of MERS in Saudi Arabia. If it's a case in the Eastern Region, is that the same as Al-Ahsa? And which of the Al-Ahsa cases is this one? When was onset?
Go back to last year's first English-language accounts in the Jordan Times of what we now call MERS; you'll see the same vagueness. But no one knew what it was then, or whether it would spread. Everyone, including the Saudis, now understands that this could be a very nasty bug. The whole world needs to know about it, and the world's entire health community may be needed to stop it.
Some virologist in Manila or Minneapolis, given enough information, might figure out where the source of MERS might be hiding. Some public-health veteran of H1N1 in Hanoi or Hong Kong, or some group of expert Americans, might imagine a way to slow down the rate of nosocomial infection.
But to do that, they need a lot more information than the Saudis (or WHO) have provided so far.
...and at least 42 deaths (WHO have 79 and 44 in recent press conference). My numbers say that 66% of cases are male as are 76% of mortalities.
I think it's worth noting, again, that (and these are my numbers only) 9 cases have no discernible age and 8 have no sex noted in press releases. 25 cases have no date of illness onset, 11 no date of death and 69 no specific date of hospitalisation.
A recent Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health release noted the death of the 2-year old boy, who was already suffering from chronic underlying lung disease.This brings up something that's been bothering me about the Saudis' MERS reports. They don't report their cases in a consistent manner, never mind a detailed one.
Sometimes we learn where a case has been identified, or we learn the age of a patient, but we never get a clear, progressive description of the progress of MERS in Saudi Arabia. If it's a case in the Eastern Region, is that the same as Al-Ahsa? And which of the Al-Ahsa cases is this one? When was onset?
Go back to last year's first English-language accounts in the Jordan Times of what we now call MERS; you'll see the same vagueness. But no one knew what it was then, or whether it would spread. Everyone, including the Saudis, now understands that this could be a very nasty bug. The whole world needs to know about it, and the world's entire health community may be needed to stop it.
Some virologist in Manila or Minneapolis, given enough information, might figure out where the source of MERS might be hiding. Some public-health veteran of H1N1 in Hanoi or Hong Kong, or some group of expert Americans, might imagine a way to slow down the rate of nosocomial infection.
But to do that, they need a lot more information than the Saudis (or WHO) have provided so far.
On Friday the World Health Organization said MERS, which can cause fever, coughing and pneumonia, had not yet reached pandemic potential and may simply die out.
ReplyDeleteThat's a Pollyanna attitude -- and foolish in the extreme.