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UPDATED: Helen Branswell now has the story, and provides additional details in :
Saudi officials find camel infected with MERS; owned by man who had disease
# 7962
The Saudi Ministry of Health has a brief, and not easy to decipher, update on a recent MERS-CoV case that indicates they are investigating the possibility that the patient acquired the virus from an animal exposure. I’ve the machine translation below, but it requires a bit of explanation – particularly the part that reads:
. . . investigate the source of infection to take samples from the environment surrounding the patient including a range of beauty in a barn belonging to the patient . . .
This becomes clearer once you know that the arabic word for `beauty’ is “jamaal” (الجمال) which in turn, is taken from “jml”, the word for `camel’. So machine translation software tends to translate the word for camel as `beauty’.
Ah, the things you pick up as a blogger. But I digress . . .
What we have here is not a barn full of beauties (well, I suppose that depends upon the eye of the beholder), but rather, a barn full of camels. One of which, according to this report, appears to have tested positive to the MERS Coronavirus.
Health: Open a new knowledge of the source of the virus (sk)
February 08, 1435
Order from the Ministry of Health on the lookout for everyone on the latest developments of the virus Corona virus that causes AIDS Middle East respiratory MERS-CoV and reference to the statement of the Ministry of Health, the former regarding recording cases of HIV Coruna in Jeddah, a citizen at the age of 43 years and who is still receiving treatment at a hospital the province, and within the work of Investigation epidemiological played by the ministry in a scientific and systematic lost ministry has examined contacts of infected according to scientific standards followed, as the ministry in its quest to find out and investigate the source of infection to take samples from the environment surrounding the patient including a range of beauty in a barn belonging to the patient, has shown a positive beauty to the initial laboratory tests for the virus.
The Ministry is currently in coordination with the Ministry of Agriculture and the scientific to confirm tests and virus isolation and compared in terms of genetic makeup with HIV patient, and, if proven match the virus infected the patient and phrases it discovers for the first time in the world and is open to know the source of this virus and will, God willing, in the knowledge of the world of epidemiological disease and its modes of transmission.
You will probably recall that last August we saw results of camel testing in Oman, and other areas of the Arabian Peninsula (but not in Saudi Arabia) showing a high incidence of MERS-like antibodies (see FAO: FAQ On The Lancet MERS-CoV – Camel Study). Whether is was, in fact, the MERS-Cov strain that has infected 150 people in the Middle East over the past year remains unproven.
We will eagerly await the genetic analysis of both the patient’s virus, and the virus isolated from his camel, to learn if both viruses are the same. This is not a slam dunk. But if further test results show a high degree of similarity between them, it could be a game changer.
Stay tuned.
