Saudi Arabia now starting MERS tests for camels and livestock.

Saudi Arabia now starting MERS tests for camels and livestock. HT: Croft.

Via Arab News: MERS tests for camels and livestock. Excerpt:

The Kingdom has started testing camels in the country for the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), according to Minister of Agriculture Fahd Balghuneim. 

Speaking at a workshop in Riyadh recently on registering and numbering livestock in the country, Balghuneim said the ministry would start testing all livestock in the Kingdom starting next week to make sure they do not have MERS. 

He said there would be coordination with the Saudi Wildlife Authority to take samples from wild animals kept in nature reserves to determine the level of coronavirus infection in the Kingdom. 

He said there is no suitable equipment to conduct speedy tests for coronavirus. Officials have to take blood or mucus samples, which takes a long time. 

Balghuneim confirmed that there are no tests for the coronavirus at quarantine sites in countries exporting animals to Saudi Arabia. 

He said the measure is part of the ministry’s program to control the spread of infectious diseases. Livestock entering the Kingdom just before Ramadan would be quarantined and vaccinated in exporting countries. 

“We started registering and numbering livestock last year in Um Raqaiba. We started with camels belonging to Prince Mishal bin Abdulaziz to encourage other camel owners to do the same. Next week we will speed up the operation. The numbering of livestock will include sheep and camels in Badia through contractors working for the Ministry of Agriculture,” he said.

Qatar: Three camels identified with MERS.

Qatar: Three camels identified with MERS.HT: Croft.

Via Kuwait News Agency, a November 28 report: Qatar announces the first recorded case of an outbreak of a virus (Corona) between three camels. The Google translation:

The Supreme Council of Health Qatar here tonight for detection in collaboration with the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment of the Ministry of Health, Dutch and College (Aarasems) Medical in the Netherlands for the first case of an outbreak of laboratory confirmed the virus (Corona) that causes Acquired Middle East respiratory between three camels in Qatar. 

said the Supreme Council for the health of the country in a statement, "it was the discovery of those cases in a barn on one link with the two previous cases equalize laboratory among humans has been Chweahma." 

He explained that he was examined three cases within 14 camels took samples based on the epidemiological investigation of the Inter-Public Health Department of the Supreme Council of Health and the livestock department at the Ministry of Environment of Qatar, and pointed out that the camels of the 14 were not suffering from symptoms when taken samples of which were isolated as a precaution for 40 days and is still in good condition and did not show any symptoms until today. 

noted that the fruit of this discovery is the result of ongoing efforts between the Supreme Council of Health and the Ministry of Environment and the National Institute for Public Health and Environment Dutch as well as the World Health Organization. 

considered the disease a modern discovery in animals does not have a working definition currently there is no scientific information is sufficient for The role of animals in the transmission of the disease and its spread.

So if I understand the translation, the camels are MERS-positive but asymptomatic. But we still don't know if MERS transmission from camel to human is direct (I suspect it's not), or whether another vector is involved.

India: Suspected MERS-CoV case in Mumbai.

India: Suspected MERS-CoV case in Mumbai.HT: Croft.

Report in The Times of India: 40-year-old man Mumbai's first suspected Gulf virus case. Excerpt:

MUMBAI: In the first suspected case of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in the city, a Vashi resident has been quarantined at Kasturba Hospital in Chinchpokli. 

The viral respiratory illness, termed deadly because of a 60% mortality rate, is currently wreaking havoc in Gulf countries. 

The 40-year-old man was admitted to the hospital's ward 30, meant for infectious diseases, on Wednesday afternoon with complaints of fever and a progressing pneumonia (inflammation of lungs). The patient had returned to India on August 12 after spending 35 days in Saudi Arabia. 

Of the 46 deaths due to MERS-CoV reported globally, a majority were from Saudi Arabia, where the virus had first emerged in 2012. 

The Vashi resident had contacted a local physician in Navi Mumbai after his fever did not subside for almost a week. 

In most cases detected globally, MERS-CoV has been found to cause a lung infection. Fever with chills, cough, breathing problems and gastrointestinal ailments were some of the other symptoms. While the Vashi resident had pneumonia in the left lung, he did not show any signs of breathlessness. 

After the patient tested negative for H1N1, doctors suspected that he had caught the virus during his stay in Saudi Arabia. His samples have been sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune. 

A civic official said, "The patient has been started on antiviral oseltamivir. He is responding well to medication." The NIV report is expected to arrive by Friday. 

Executive health officer Dr Arun Bamne said the patient was doing well. "He is not critical and we have kept him in isolation for observation," he added. The patient does not live with his family, another civic official said.

It's a Bird....A Bat...Oh No....Scientists find MERS-like antibodies in camels.

It's a Bird....A Bat...Oh No....Scientists find MERS-like antibodies in camels.HT: Ottowa citizen.By By Helen Branswell.

European scientists have uncovered a clue to the mystery of where the new MERS coronavirus resides in nature, reporting evidence that dromedary camels can be infected with the virus.

The finding is the first confirmation of MERS infection in a species other than humans, though it does not prove that the animals are the source of infections in people, the authors were quick to say.
"I think it shows that something — either MERS or something that looks very similar to it — has been going around in camels, and that that really needs to be looked at as a possible source. That's as far as we can go, I would say," senior author Dr. Marion Koopmans said in an interview about the study, published in this week's issue of Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Koopmans and colleagues found antibodies to MERS or a closely related coronavirus in the blood of camels from Oman on the Arabian Peninsula and also on the Canary Islands, an archipelago off northwestern Africa which is part of Spain.
The fact that camels may be a source of the virus adds urgency to the task of finding out how people are getting infected and trying to prevent future infections.
That's because the animals are among a number slaughtered for sacrifice as part of the Hajj, the massive annual pilgrimage that draws several million Muslims to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. All Muslims who are able are required by their faith to make the pilgrimage at least once in their lifetime.
To complete the responsibilities of the Hajj, each pilgrim must participate in the sacrifice of an animal. That participation often takes the form of contributing to the cost of buying and slaughtering the animal and then distributing the cooked meat to family members and the poor.
The animal sacrifices take place during Eid al Adha — the feast of sacrifice — that concludes the Hajj. This year the pilgrimage will occur in early to mid-October.
"Given that animal sacrifice is an essential and a mandatory component of the Hajj of the pilgrims ... finding an answer as quickly as possible would be quite important," said Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious diseases physician at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital who specializes in using airline traffic data to predict the global movement of diseases.
"I do think what this really does is helps guide some of the further investigations now. But there is certainly some time sensitivity around it."
The World Health Organization's lead expert on the MERS virus agreed getting answers sooner rather than later would be a good idea in light of the fast-approaching Hajj.
"If this virus is actually transmitting and circulating in camels and-or other animals, that could be a time of exposure," said Dr. Anthony Mounts. "It does mean that we need to do the investigations to find out the routes of transmission."Read the full story here.

Not only Giant Beavers lived in Canada - Giant ancient camels once lived in Canada’s high Arctic.

Not only Giant Beavers lived in Canada - Giant ancient camels once lived in Canada’s high Arctic.(Yahoo).Using genetic samples from this collagen, it took a group of Canadian and British scientists three years to figure out what animal the bone fragments belonged to.

Molecular palaeontologist Mike Buckley, who works at the University of Manchester, UK, used 'collagen fingerprinting' to examine the samples, and determined that they were nearly identical to samples taken from camel remains found previously in the Yukon. Furthermore, they found that the samples from both camels matched those of the genetic line of camels that originated in North America, crossed the land-bridge across the Bering Sea and into Asia, between seven and eight million years ago.

Piecing together all the fragments, they suggested that the camel was about 30 per cent larger than camels today, roughly 2.7 metres tall and around 900 kilograms.Read the full story here.