Dr. Ian Mackay - MERS cases jump by 8 today...biggest 24-hours in 15-months?

Dr. Ian Mackay - MERS cases jump by 8 today...biggest 24-hours in 15-months? HT: Croft.

On VDU's blog, Dr. Ian Mackay has a must-read post: MERS cases jump by 8 today...biggest 24-hours in 15-months? I was sorely tempted to run the whole thing, but here's an excerpt (with his bolding); then get out of here and go read the rest of the post.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's (KSA) individual list of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) cases that have been acquired within its borders (and that's just to the best of my knowledge) is at 101. It's just a number but it's also 81.5% of all laboratory confirmed cases to date. And it rose to 124 by a jump of 8 cases today (VDU time that is).

The latest KSA cases continue to pop up in Hafr Al Batin (Batin) Medinah (Medina) and Riyadh. Contacts (~4/8), healthcare workers (~1/8) and comorbidities (~3/8) feature heavily - and that's just among the ones with those details included. We're missing sex on most and dates of onset have been getting more rare since May.

Within those 8 cases are 3 deaths (37.5% of those cases). Are these the first reports of these people? How long is the turnaround time for testing currently? This proportion is below the global proportion of fatal cases (PFC) which as of just now stands at 46% (57 deaths have data available to use in this calculation).

The other thing we should factor in is co-infections with other respiratory viruses, and with bacteria. The viruses, as noted in my previous post, may now be starting to increase in prevalence as the "cooler" months affect the region. None of the broader testing data (presumably they were screened for other pathogens as well) are available on recent cases and few details available on earlier cases.

The KSA MOH announcements are here and here. Mike Coston has a post about the cases, and Helen Branswell is making some perceptive comments on Twitter.

Useful MERS infographic: QuikStats: MERS-CoV (September 2013).