#14,578
The recent slowdown in MERS cases continues, with only the second case of December reported late yesterday by the Saudi MOH (Epi Week 50).
Details, as usual, are scant but the case involves a 66 y.o. male from Abha City, who is listed as a `primary' case with unknown camel contact.
This is the 202nd case reported by Saudi Arabia in 2019, and while a far cry from the numbers we saw 3 or 4 years ago, it is a signficant increase over 2018's total (n=142).
Typically, December and January are fairly quiet months for MERS cases (see The Global Seasonal Occurrence of MERS-CoV), with cases peaking between February and June.While MERS-CoV has yet to take off the way that SARS did 16 years ago, we've seen studies (see A Pandemic Risk Assessment Of MERS-CoV In Saudi Arabia) suggesting the virus doesn't have all that far to evolve before it could pose a genuine global threat.
So we keep a close watch on cases, looking for any signs that the threat has changed.
