Distribution of MERS-CoV Cases – Credit VDU MERS-CoV
# 7371
The last of Italy’s confirmed MERS cases – a 46 year old man with recent travel to Jordan – was released from the hospital last night after his tests no longer showed positive for the virus.
The unnamed patient was hospitalized on May 28th - and in stark contrast to many of the other cases we’ve seen - his condition has always been described as `good’.
Two others - a 2 year-old relative, and a co-worker - were also hospitalized for several days after developing mild symptoms, and testing positive for the virus.
This from La Nazione.
The new Sars, contagions in Flzorence was discharged the first case report
Florence, June 7, 2013 -
(EXCERPT)
At this point, all three patients (man, woman and child) who were hospitalized in Florence for the Mers (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) are well and at home. Continuous health monitoring of people who are come into contact with the three, and to date no 'was recorded no new cases.
The mysteries surrounding this emerging coronavirus continue to deepen, particularly in light of the unusually mild course of illness in these three patients. While we’ve seen a few scattered `mild’ cases over the past year, the vast majority of those diagnosed have displayed serious, even fatal illness.
Again from Dr. Ian Mackay’s MERS-CoV website.
Unknown at this time is to what degree a person’s pre-existing medical conditions (or age, or even gender) may influence the course, and outcome, of infection.
Again, from Ian’s website:
Most MERS-CoV cases are in males (includes surviving and fatal cases) but the bias towards males among the fatal cases is extreme. This is likely linked to the high proportion of underlying medical conditions among males who died and were positive for the virus. It may also be due to some other factor that puts males at greater risk of exposure to the suspected animal host(s) of MERS-CoV.
Mild cases also raise concerns that there could be more undiagnosed cases out there not being picked up by surveillance, and that we are only seeing the proverbial `sickest of the sick’.
While contact testing has failed to show a high rate of human transmission, we probably won’t know how widespread this virus really is until seroprevalence studies can be conducted.
