MERS Spreading, Compared to SARS

Posted this on the MERS Watch thread earlier, soficrow. Decided it needs its own thread.


MERS cases just jumped by almost 100 to 290 - and the disease now has spread from the Middle East to other countries. Health pundits are starting to compare the situation to the SARS outbreak.

MERS virus outbreak raising SARS-like concern

Cases of Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome — MERS — have shot up markedly in the past month, driven it appears by outbreaks in hospitals or among health-care workers in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates.

"It does kind of bring flashbacks to SARS when we're seeing more health-care associated infections. Obviously that was a big challenge here in Toronto," says Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious diseases physician at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital who specializes in using airline traffic data to predict the international movement of diseases.

In late March the global total of confirmed MERS cases crossed the 200 mark, two years after the first known infections occurred. By late Saturday, the combined global count announced by the World Health Organization and national governments was closing in on 290 cases.

If all are confirmed, it will mean 28 per cent of all MERS cases will have been reported in the last month.

This week has also brought word that an event many dread but see as inevitable has again happened. MERS has spread from the Middle East to other countries.

MERS is scarier than Ebola when it comes to the thoughts of a virus that could spread throughout the world. Ebola is hands down more lethal and a nastier way to die although gasping to death wouldn't be pleasant, either, but MERS is more like the cold or flu in terms of its potential to spread IMO.

Which countries has it spread too.?

And how many individuals ?

:-)

PDUK

Ive been following this since it popped up on RSOE. So far its showing only Saudi and Oman.

According to the link its in the Philippines, Malaysia and Greece.

his week has also brought word that an event many dread but see as inevitable has again happened. MERS has spread from the Middle East to other countries.

A nurse who was infected in the UAE travelled home to the Philippines where he and several of his local contacts were promptly put into isolation. And a Malaysian man who went to Mecca to perform Umrah, a Muslim pilgrimage, was infected and died upon his return to Malaysia. Authorities from the Philippines and Malaysia were tracking down people who were on the flights those men took.

Case in Greece

On Saturday, Greece announced it had discovered its first MERS case, in a Greek national who has been living in Jeddah, one of the current MERS hotspots.

Like embers flying off a raging bonfire, these types of travel cases will continue to happen, Khan predicts.

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originally posted by: ketsuko
MERS is scarier than Ebola when it comes to the thoughts of a virus that could spread throughout the world. Ebola is hands down more lethal and a nastier way to die although gasping to death wouldn't be pleasant, either, but MERS is more like the cold or flu in terms of its potential to spread IMO.

well to be fair, and I don't want to sound harsh, but the good thing about Ebola is its lethality... it will most likely stop itself from spreading it due to this.
I don't know what MERS is, maybe I just don't know the English term... will check it now

edit: ahh seems to be pretty new, a type of Coronavirus... that is why I never heard about it. Let's hope it does not spread

a reply to: aLLeKs

...the good thing about Ebola is its lethality... it will most likely stop itself from spreading it due to this.

People keep saying this, and ignoring the fact that Ebola's incubation time is up to 3 weeks - plenty of time to hop on a plane, fly round the world and appear whoknowswhere.

MERS also is quite deadly and unlike Ebola, it's airborne.

MERS scare: Intense monitoring on 15 pilgrims to continue for two weeks

MERS-Coronavirus Kills Malaysian Man, Infects Filipino Nurse

More coverage.

The deadly MERS virus is spreading at a terrifying rate

On Thursday, the Saudi Arabian health ministry confirmed 13 more cases of patients contracting MERS-CoV, the acronym for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, as well as two more deaths. MERS-CoV is an infectious disease with no known cure and is considered more deadly than SARS--which killed some 800 people during a 2002-2003 outbreak that first started in China. Since 2012, 83 people have died and 285 people have contracted the virus in the Kingdom alone. It has spread to the neighboring United Arab Emirates. Reports also suggest pilgrims from as far afield as Malaysia and the Philippines contracted the virus while on hajj in Mecca.

What's been truly alarming has been the recent surge in numbers of those infected, with more confirmed reports so far this year than in all of 2013. ...

....In Jeddah, where the majority of cases have been reported, four doctors resigned earlier this month after refusing to treat MERS-CoV patients. That's hardly a vote of confidence as international health officials and Saudi Arabia's panicked neighbors look to the Kingdom to stave off a potential global outbreak.

WHO concerned by nearly 150 new MERS cases this month

The World Health Organization expressed concern Wednesday about the recent sharp rise in MERS cases in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Between them, the two countries have announced nearly 150 new infections with the MERS coronavirus this month.

...The WHO noted about three quarters of the recently diagnosed cases involve person-to-person spread of the virus, with most of the affected people contracting the virus in hospitals.

"Approximately 75 per cent of the recently reported cases are secondary cases, meaning that they are considered to have acquired the infection from another case through human-to-human transmission," said Dr. Ala Alwan, regional director of the WHO's Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office.

...The two countries have also exported cases. A man from Greece who became ill with a gastro-intestinal ailment while in Jeddah sought care in a hospital there. Later he flew home with symptoms of MERS and has been confirmed as a case.

A man from Malaysia who was in Saudi Arabia on a religious pilgrimage contracted the virus and died after returning to his home country. And a nurse who tested positive for the virus in UAE flew home to the Philippines.

... in recent days Saudi officials have spoken of seeking help from the WHO and international experts. And WHO said Wednesday it has offered to mobilize international expertise through its Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network to help both Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

....people familiar with SARS who are watching MERS see many parallels between the two.

"It is worrying me that the hospital control of transmission appears to be a significant problem," said McGeer. "It suggests that the virus is changing and if the virus is changing then that of course doesn't rule out that we could have a new human coronavirus...if we just give it enough time."

originally posted by: soficrow
a reply to: aLLeKs

...the good thing about Ebola is its lethality... it will most likely stop itself from spreading it due to this.

People keep saying this, and ignoring the fact that Ebola's incubation time is up to 3 weeks - plenty of time to hop on a plane, fly round the world and appear whoknowswhere.

MERS also is quite deadly and unlike Ebola, it's airborne.

MERS scare: Intense monitoring on 15 pilgrims to continue for two weeks

MERS-Coronavirus Kills Malaysian Man, Infects Filipino Nurse

I don't think anyone is contesting that Ebola has a window of opportunity to be carried outside of its immediate area, but its method of transmission is still pretty specialized requiring direct contact with infected body fluids. That fact more or less limits it in ways that MERS is not. Modern sanitation is a major weapon against Ebola for example. Part of the reason it's kept going for so long in Africa is due to ignorance and superstition and the general lack of development as much as Ebola's ability to spread. Those first three things aid and abet its spread.

a reply to: ketsuko


Seems clear to me that our vaunted civilization isn't. [Civilized I mean.] Ebola has an equal chance of spreading in the subways of New York or Tokyo, slums of Buenos Aires and London as in the jungles of Guinea. Wait - I take that back. It would get around a lot faster, and mutate more rapidly, in heavily populated centers.

MORE about the MERS outbreak.

Exported MERS cases 'very likely,' WHO warns; Canada on the lookout, PHAC says

Could MERS Become The New SARS?

WHO concerned by nearly 150 new MERS cases this month

Public told: Take note of Mers-CoV’s incubation period

….In an interview with Dr. Lyndon Lee Suy, Department of Health (DOH) program manager on Emerging Infectious Diseases and Spokesperson for MERS-CoV, said that the virus has a three- to 14-day incubation period.

Dr. Suy said this means that beyond 14 days without any signs and symptoms of the disease, a suspected carrier is considered already non-infective or did not acquire the disease.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated on its website that patients can shed the virus after resolution of symptoms but also noted that the duration of infectivity is unknown.

It also states that patients are not contagious during the incubation period and that asymptomatic (without obvious symptoms) cases might not be contagious.

a reply to: ketsuko

Seems the "camel-vector" hypothesis does NOT explain the recent spike in MERS cases - and looks like Saudi Arabia dropped the ball on MERS research. Now, we may be in trouble. As eminent virologist Michael Osterholm warns, “When humans readily transmit to humans, that’s what will cause a worldwide outbreak. We are very concerned that … with what we’ve seen over the past two weeks … we may be at that point now.”

Saudi Arabia says has 10 more cases in MERS outbreak

(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has confirmed 10 more cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which kills around a third of sufferers, and said two more people have died from the disease.

….Saudi Arabia, where MERS was discovered around two years ago and which remains the country most affected, has now had 323 confirmed cases of MERS, of which 94 have been fatal.

The 127 cases announced since the start of April represent a 65 percent jump in total infections in Saudi Arabia this month.

Saudi MERS cases surge but experts at loss to explain spike

As the number of reported cases of the potentially deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome surged this week, public health experts are struggling to understand where it originated, how it is spread and why there has been a sudden spike in infections.

….The World Health Organisation is particularly worried these two clusters could indicate there is an “evolving risk” in the spread of MERS. Pointing to “critical information gaps” regarding the transmission of the virus, it has offered to work jointly with national health authorities in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to investigate the outbreaks in order to determine the transmission chain.

….Malaysia, Greece, Yemen and the Philippines all reported their first cases of the virus in the past two weeks - all the sufferers had been working or travelling in Saudi Arabia.

….It took more than two years to reach the first 100 cases of MERS, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Centre for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

“Now, in just the past two weeks, we’ve had 100 cases … There’s a major change occurring that cannot just be attributed to better case detection," he said. “When humans readily transmit to humans, that’s what will cause a worldwide outbreak. We are very concerned that … with what we’ve seen over the past two weeks … we may be at that point now.”