Dr. Mackay: Hafr Al Batin MERS-CoV cluster grows......

Dr. Mackay: Hafr Al Batin MERS-CoV cluster grows......HT: Croft.

On VDU's blog, Dr. Ian Mackay writes: Hafr Al Batin MERS-CoV cluster grows... Excerpt:

Apart from Riyadh's latest flurry of cases, Hafr Al Batin (Batin) has been hosting cases in healthcare workers (HCWs) since July. Lately though, we've seen seeing more HCWs - with reports suggesting as many as 10 in the cluster, and the possibility - raised via numerous local media and other reports - of more in this cluster. As with most clusters, cases seem to include human-to-human transmission events.

Is this a hospital based outbreak, a change in the virus to something more transmissible or some particular activity that is exposing people in this region to more animal host infections?

Those long-awaited MERS-CoV full genome sequences we heard about recently are still not here, but if they were, they likely won't include recent strains like the ones in Batin. We really need to get over this whole-genome fetish and get some subgenomic sequencing going to reduce turnaround time.

His post also includes a useful map of Saudi Arabia, showing Hafr Al-Batin in the northeast corner of Saudi Arabia, very close to both Kuwait and Iraq.