Thursday, August 01, 2013

MERS-CoV: KSA Announces 3 More Cases

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# 7631

 

This morning Saudi Arabia announced three more MERS cases, two involving health care workers (1 in Riyadh, 1 in Asir), both apparently only suffering mild illness.  A third patient, with chronic health problems, is in intensive care.

 

In recent weeks two trends have appeared.

 

  • First, we are seeing more health care workers affected (which, if proper precautions are being taken, shouldn’t happen this often).
  • Second as better tests and procedures are developed, more `mild’ and/or asymptomatic cases are being detected.

 

`Milder’ cases demonstrate that MERS-CoV – like many other viruses  - is capable of producing a wide spectrum of illness in humans. 

 

While this lowers the perceived mortality rate of the illness – this also increases concerns that MERS-CoV may be capable of spreading in the community undetected by current surveillance and monitoring efforts.

 

 

This from the KSA’s  new coronavirus webpage.

 

MOH: ‘Three Confirmed Cases of Novel Coronavirus Recorded in Riyadh and Asir’

Within the framework of the epidemiological surveillance of the novel Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), the Ministry of Health (MOH) has announced that three confirmed cases have been recorded. The first case is for a 67-year-old female citizen in Riyadh, who had been suffering from various chronic diseases, and she is now at the ICU, receiving the health care and proper treatment.

 

The rest two cases are for 39-year-old female residents, who work at the health sector; one of them lives in Asir and the other in Riyadh. They have mild symptoms but their health status are stable.