Reported MERS-CoV Cases By KSA In 2021
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In the first 4 months of 2020, before COVID had really begun to pummel the Middle East, Saudi Arabia had reported roughly 50 MERS-CoV cases. Once the pandemic virus firmly arrived, however, reporting on MERS-CoV abruptly stopped.
Between June 1st and early November of 2020, Saudi Arabia reported no MERS cases, nor did any other Middle Eastern nation.
Four cases were reported late in the year, but the WHO EMRO monthly report on MERS went without an update for more than a year (see WHO EMRO Updates A Year's Worth Of MERS-COV Reports From Saudi Arabia).
In the first 4 months of 2021, KSA had only reported 7 MERS-CoV cases - a reduction of roughly 85% over 2020. But even in the best of times (pre-COVID), estimates were that only a fraction of symptomatic MERS cases were identified (see EID Journal: Estimation of Severe MERS Cases in the Middle East, 2012–2016).
A 2018 study, written by former Deputy Health Minister Ziad A. Memish et al. (see Evaluation of a Visual Triage for the Screening of MERS-CoV Patients), concluded that Saudi Arabia's screening process for MERS testing was `. . . not predictive of MERS infection.'
Add in the repeated `lapses' in MERS reporting over the years - sometimes lasting months - by KSA (see The Saudi MOH Breaks Their Silence On MERS-CoV), and the reduction in MERS cases being reported over the past year may be a little less reassuring.
Although it doesn't (yet) appear on their Epi Week 18 MERS Surveillance page, digging a little deeper reveals KSA's 8th reported case of 2021, involving a 36 y.o. male in Hafr al-Batin with reported camel exposure, who is deceased at the time of this report.
Hafr al-Batin has been the site of a number MERS cases and clusters over the years (see here, here, and here) and a 2014 epidemiological study suggested the camel festival held there – Mazayin al-Ibl aka “The Best of the Herds” – might have been a source of at least some of those infections.
Today's report is notable in that the victim is relatively young (36), and was deceased at the time of reporting.
These initial Saudi reports don't give us crucial information like onset dates, hospitalization dates, or when a positive test was first received. So it is impossible to know how long this individual may have been hospitalized before being isolated.
In the past, we've seen posthumously identified MERS-CoV cases linked to hospital outbreaks, in some cases involving scores of cases. Large hospital outbreaks have been on the decline in Saudi Arabia for the past few years, so hopefully this will not the case this time.