Credit Dr. Ian Mackay VDU Blog
# 8391
Professor Ian Mackay, writing on his VDU Blog, has three new posts on the MERS Coronavirus in the wake of yesterday’s announced new cases in the Middle East (see CIDRAP NEWS Five new MERS cases reported in 3 countries).
On Ian’s mind is the relative frequency of reported prior camel contact among non-Saudi MERS cases compared to those from KSA.
Follow the links to read his thoughts on the matter in their entirety. Taken in order of appearance, they are:
MERS in the UAE....[UPDATED]
For the second time this month, there has been a case of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MES-CoV) infection confirmed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE; Abu Dhabi to be precise).
What added to my confusion (as you'll know if you were following me on Twitter this morning) was that both cases, apart from being from Abu Dhabi, were also 68-year old males and both have had camel contact.
MERS in Kuwait...
It's a "MERS-in.." kinda day.
The World Health Organization today announced a fatal case of confirmed MERS-CoV infection diagnosed in Kuwait [1].
Summary of the case details:
- The infected person was a 60-year old male
- A Syrian national
- Hospitalised 13-Feb-2014
- Died 6-Mar-2014
- Lab confirmed 9-Mar-2014
- He had comorbidities
MERS in camels...
The top pie chart shows the distribution of all human cases containing the word "camel" in their case notes, by the site where the human was likely to have acquired their MERS-CoV infection. The bottom bar graph shows those data in terms of the proportion of cases at that site for which "camel" contact was possible.
Click on chart to enlarge.Thanks very much to Nicholas Evans (@neva9257 via Twitter) for asking me to back up my gut feeling about there having been more camel-links among MERS-CoV cases outside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) compared to inside.
I live to serve and so using those data I have to hand I've made a couple of charts. I'll keep these updated from now on too.
I'd be grateful if anyone wanted to shout out human cases where camel contact was mentioned. I currently have 8 in total on my list of 201 lab confirmed MERS-CoV cases. (see the figure up there for where my cases are sourced). There may be many I have missed though.
As always, Ian’s graphics and commentary are first rate and worthy of your time.
Highly recommended.
