OMAN: 4 New MERS Cases Reported

OMAN MOH Statement on MERS  Feb 14th

#13,865


This afternoon there have been multiple Arabic media reports indicating that Oman's Ministry of Health had issued a new MERS statement, adding 4 new cases to the 6 reported over the past 16 days.

The problem is, there is (as of this writing) no official statement on the Oman MOH website.

What I have found, which appears to corroborate the media reports, is a tweet from the Oman MOH a few hours ago.  The writing is (unfortunately) in graphic format, and so regular translation software won't work.

So, with the caveat that we're relying on a media translation, the MOH release states:

Health issued a new statement about the # Corona
 
Thursday, 14 February 2019 7:17 PM
Ministry of Health

Monitoring - ether

The Ministry of Health issued a statement No. (4) on strengthening precautionary measures to control the Middle East respiratory syndrome "Corona" in the Sultanate.

According to Atheer, the statement reads as follows:

"The Ministry of Health in the latest update of the data on the Middle East respiratory syndrome (Corona) in the Sultanate, the number of cases recorded this year has reached ten cases and resulted in 4 deaths from different provinces of the Sultanate.

With the increase in the number of cases, the ministry will strengthen precautionary measures and prevention at the level of hospitals and health centers in order to promote the early detection of infected and reduce the spread of infection within the founder 

After going nearly 11 months without reporting a MERS case, on January 29th  the Omani MOH reported 4 MERS-CoV Cases, followed 6 days later (Feb 4th) with an update indicating a 5th MERS Case and 2 Deaths.

Yesterday, nine days later - Oman's MOH Reported A 6th MERS Case - and 24 hours later, they've announced 4 more.  All of the reports have been largely devoid of specifics.

Last Monday, the WHO published a MERS-CoV Update - Oman, which covered the first five cases, and stated all five are members of the same family, and live on a farm together.

Today's update from the MOH specifically mentions  `. . . ten cases and resulted in 4 deaths from different provinces of the Sultanate' which would suggest that - if all of these cases are epidemiologically related - it is no longer confined to a single family farm. 

Prior to this outbreak, Oman had only reported 11 MERS cases in the 7 years since the virus was first identified.  In just over 2 weeks, that total has nearly doubled. 

Stay tuned.  This story continues to evolve.