#13,966
After a very quiet Epi week #12, where only one case was reported from Saudi Arabia, over the past 3 days Saudi Arabia has reported 6 new cases (see here, and here).
Three of these six cases hail from Hufoof (aka Hofuf), and are listed as `primary' without camel contact. This would suggest community acquired cases with no identified source of exposure.Three such cases, reported over 3 days, from the same town (pop. 660K) is a bit unusual. Today's second case is a 75 y.o. male from Al Khafji - which is on the border with Kuwait - with reported recent camel contact.
Despite an impressive first quarter of cases for 2019, we haven't seen any indication of sustained or efficient transmission of the MERS virus in the Middle East.
That said, 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).Making any spike in MERS activity a concern, and with expected influx of tens of thousands of religious pilgrims to KSA for the Holy Month of Ramadan (May 5th-Jun 4th), well worth our continued attention.
