# 7573
When it comes to entertainment value, the Indian press is hard to beat, but their seldom-restrained style of reporting has taught me to favor a `watchful waiting’ attitude when it comes to their coverage of infectious diseases.
With that caveat, we’ve a report overnight (h/t FluTrackers) that a 40-y.o. man - recently returned from an extended stay in Saudi Arabia - has been hospitalized with signs of fever and pneumonia in Chinchpokli, a suburb of south Mumbai.
The patient was initially tested for H1N1, but those results came back negative (note: It isn’t clear what other types of flu were tested for). Nevertheless, he has been placed on oseltamivir (Tamiflu ®), an antiviral therapy specifically for influenza, and is said to be `responding well’.
Patient samples have been sent to India’s National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune, for testing for MERS-CoV. We should have some results in the next 24 hours.
Assuming the article is correct, and the patient is responding to oseltamivir, then that lessens (but does not obviate) the chances that this patient is infected with MERS.
The latest CDC HAN Update On MERS-CoV reminds clinicians that patients can sometimes harbor dual infections; MERS and Influenza, or some other respiratory infection.
CDC has changed its criteria for who should be evaluated for MERS-CoV. In the previous guidance (HAN 348, dated June 7, 2013), CDC did not recommend MERS-CoV testing for people whose illness could be explained by another etiology. The new guidance states that, in patients who meet certain clinical and epidemiologic criteria, testing for MERS-CoV and other respiratory pathogens can be done simultaneously and that positive results for another respiratory pathogen should not necessarily preclude testing for MERS-CoV.
Here then is the link to the Times of India report on this suspected case.
40-year-old man Mumbai's first suspected Gulf virus case
Sumitra Deb Roy, TNN | Aug 15, 2013, 01.28 AM IST
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.
Regardless of how this particular case turns out, we need to get used to seeing these types of reports, as millions of devout Muslims are scheduled to converge on Saudi Arabia for the Hajj in October and many will return home with some kind of respiratory illness.
Unless and until MERS-CoV becomes more transmissible, the vast majority of these cases will undoubtedly test negative for the coronavirus.
But it is only through detailed surveillance and testing that we can know whether the threat from this novel coronavirus is changing.
