Dr. Ian Mackay; "Death of a young adult Qatari MERS patient who presented with flu-like illness."

Dr. Ian Mackay; "Death of a young adult Qatari MERS patient who presented with flu-like illness."HT: Croft

"This will be a big challenge if observation alone, rather than prospective laboratory testing, is used as a method to diagnose MERS among hajjis,in the coming weeks."

The Qatari Supreme Council of Health, as it does, has issued an announcement through the media (it has yet to update it's technically troubled website) announcing the death of the previously described 29-year old male with asthma who had been confirmed by an international (presumably UK-based) reference laboratory.

Asthma occurs in about 5% of the world's population, but in higher proportions in particular countries and regions.

This moves the deaths up to 54 with data, possibly 56 in total (see earlier post today for what that means) with a PFC of 48.3% for 56 deaths.

The presentation of this case on August 17th, was of "flu-like illness" which can be anything from fever + cough to much more. What this case highlights, and it is only a single case, is that cases can present with standard upper respiratory tract infection (flu most often starts off that way) which will make it devilishly hard to discriminate from that caused by many other non-MERS-CoV respiratory viruses. In a study of pilgrims leaving the 2012 hajj, 41% had flu-like symptoms (cough, sore throat and fever).