Saudi MOH Reports 4 New MERS Cases

Original Map Credit Wikipedia

#13,884

Saudi Arabia's February surge in MERS cases continues with 4 new cases announced (1 late yesterday, 3 today). Of these two are secondary cases from hard hit Wadi Aldwasir, and two others are primary cases with camel contact; one in Mekkah, and the other in Jeddah.

Of note, two cases announced on Thursday from Wadi Aldwasir remain unclassified, and are still listed as `under investigation'.

So far in 2019, Saudi Arabia has announced 77 MERS cases -  and of those 49 have hailed from Wadi Aldwasir.  In addition to more than a dozen primary infections (some with camel contact, some without).

• 7 cases have been listed as secondary, household contacts
• 2 cases have been listed as secondary, community-acquired
• 26 cases have been listed as secondary, healthcare-acquired.

Spillover of the MERS coronavirus from camels continues to reintroduce the virus into the local human population, but most human infections are still acquired from exposure to another infected human.  

Community transmission of the virus has thankfully been both sporadic and limited, and so the virus has fallen short of producing a sustained epidemic. Hopefully that will remain the case.

But a 2017 study found the virus's basic reproduction number (R0 : pronounced R-nought) was inching closer to the magic number of 1.0, which is what is required for an outbreak to have `legs' (see A Pandemic Risk Assessment Of MERS-CoV In Saudi Arabia).    

So we are monitoring this MERS surge closely, looking for any signs that the virus's patterns are changing.