MERS Watch

Two new MERS cases in Saudi Arabia bring the totals up to 163 confirmed cases and 71 deaths. The WHO says MERS is not an international health emergency but that countries must do more to tackle the disease. Scientists still do not know where MERS came from or how it is spreading.

Saudi Arabia reports two more MERS cases

Saudi Arabia's health ministry today announced two more Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infections, one of which appears to be in a health worker with an asymptomatic infection who had contact with a confirmed case…

WHO: MERS not an international health emergency

December 5, 2013
The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus has not met the conditions for a public health emergency of international concern, according to a statement by WHO.

As of Dec. 2, there have been 163 confirmed cases of MERS and 71 deaths, according to WHO.

WHO calls for action on Mers following death in Abu Dhabi

December 5, 2013 Updated: December 5, 2013 12:27:00

ABU DHABI // More must be done to stop the spread of the deadly Mers coronavirus, the World Health Organisation has warned.

Countries must strengthen their surveillance, increase awareness and try to find out how people are infected, the WHO’s emergency committee said on Wednesday.

The call comes after a Mers-infected Jordanian mother in Abu Dhabi died shortly after giving birth to a daughter.

…The emergency committee has now met for a fourth time about Mers.

Scientists still do not know where it came from or how it is spreading.

…The next meeting is scheduled for March.

MERS Spreads Across Middle East

Jordanian boy, 8, diagnosed with Mers coronavirus in Abu Dhabi

Nationwide testing of animals for MERS virus to begin soon

QATAR: Health officials allay fears over Mers outbreak

...The Mers-CoV has claimed four lives in Qatar since 2012 and the virus was also suspected in a total of 4,323 persons, whose samples were checked at the Hamad Medical Corporation’s Virology laboratory, explained SCH Surveillance and Outbreak section head Dr Hamad Eid al-Romaihi.

“It was the first time in Qatar that camels were linked to Mers-CoV infections and no new cases have so far been reported because we conducted a comprehensive epidemiological investigation into potential sources of exposure of human cases involved, with the support of an international team constituted by World Health Organisation (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO),” he said.

…“People need not panic as it is only established that camels can be a host of the virus that is already identified as an animal disease, but we are yet to verify whether it is being transmitted from humans to animals or from animals to humans,” Dr al-Hajri said while recalling that a case linking the disease with bats was diagnosed in Saudi Arabia.

reply to post by soficrow


Well, on another thread today it said that they were going to deport up to 2 million people from Saudi Arabia. Maybe that will make it a threat.

I have to try to find a cure for mers. It is probably something simple, like turmeric or activated charcoal. Certain smoke configurations may be able to treat it also. Smoke being an adjuvant and containing some carbon.

Camels can be a host? I wonder what other animals can be a host for MERS?

The very worst for this would be for it to reach the conflict in Syria, right? We're already baking polio in there. Now watch MERS get into that region.

reply to post by rickymouse

Camels can be a host? I wonder what other animals can be a host for MERS?

Definitely bats, probably others. MERS is in the wild. Along with a whole lot more very scary viruses, most that we don't know about yet. ...I'd rather take my chances with nature and try to 'get in balance' than live in a bubble though.

reply to post by soficrow


If we keep our energy levels up, our bodies can usually fight these things. There are some microbes that actually feed on the energy though. Cancer feeds on this energy but if we consume things that lessen blood vessel growth, the cancer tumors start to canibalize themselves. Then we can cause a histamine reaction that targets them when they are small.

The microbes are different than cancer though. If we stimulate the body to constantly fight viruses, it is more susceptable to bacteria. If we stimulate it to fight bacteria, it is more susceptable to viruses. I think vaccines may not be helping us. You fight something when you get the illness, not when you are healthy. Keeping our bodies strong, but not strong enough to kill us, is important. If our immune system has nothing to fight, it's chemicals build too high in some of us and it starts to eat at us or causes too strong of a histamine reaction that kills us.

Keeping a proper electrolyte balance is crucial and avoiding some foods that dampen this signal is important to being able to fight properly.

reply to post by rickymouse


The problem with novel infections like MERS and the avian flu strains is that they are things our immune systems have no experience with. If you have a healthy, strong immune system, you are actually at the most risk from them. Your own immune system goes into hyper-drive and kills you. That's why the Spanish Flu Pandemic killed mainly the young and healthy.

Spanish Flu was still just the flu, but it was a completely novel strain. Those who died got stuff like ARDS and killed themselves rather than dying from the flu itself. Then, you had the regular deaths from the younger and older populations who had the usual issues with secondary infections and the like. In all other respects, it was still just the flu although a rather nasty one.

Human coronavirus is a cold type virus, but in dogs and other animals, it's intestinal. Is this one a cold-style coronavirus? If so, it's still going to be a completely novel upper respiratory virus with the same problems as the avian flu for our immune systems.

reply to post by ketsuko


Some of these vaccines cause a reaction that lowers the chemicals of the immune system. This means that our immune system won't kill us if it gets triggered by the virus. I don't think that this is the right approach myself. The reason I get a violent reaction to the flu shot is because I already have immunity to the virus, my body recognizes it and throws a fit. They are trying to stimulate antigen production but that isn't even right. Now they are working on stimulating special T cell production that actually fights all viruses. I'm surprised that they didn't know before that different cells fight viruses before this and they don't use antigens.

I researched the chemical that stimulates this production. Going to Big Boy and having a big piece of strawberry pie should do the trick. Seems strawberries have this chemical. Trouble is that this chemical reduces our ability to fight bacteria. So we shouldn't always eat strawberries. You don't take constant medicine when you aren't sick. I have local strawberries in the freezer and also homemade jam. I don't know if the chemical is heat liable or not. I don't know if freezing denatures it either. Big boy is just ten miles away though

There may be other places this chemical is present but there does not seem to be research available on it. I doubt if the medical industry is interested in telling us this, and I am sure they will not research what foods it is in. The Pharma company will make a vaccine and not tell us to just eat strawberries....which are cheaper since we like treats anyway. The vaccine they make will undoubtedly lower our resistance to bacteria just like strawberries do. Maybe people with aids should eat strawberries

Oh, I won't and don't take flu vaccines with any regularity. I think I've maybe done it five times in all my years of life. This year was an exception because I'd had a bad case of bronchitis and my asthma was irritated badly enough I'd injured my chest coughing. I felt I ought to try to stop getting anything else that might aggravate my asthma for a while, so I got the vaccine. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered.

Normally, I'm the healthiest one in the family which is why I watch these things so hard. The last thing I want is to die because my own healthy immune response kills me.

reply to post by rickymouse


I agree, proper medical intervention is highly personalized - treatment should stop or change when the initiating symptoms disappear or change. (I REALLY miss my Chinese Doctor from Santa Fe, NM. The ancient medical traditions were the original practitioners of "personalized medicine.") ...I have some serious medical issues - don't want to get sucked in to all the Western 'treatments' but also know that ignorance=stupid=death. It's tricky. I finally found a GP and specialist who don't write me off as "non-compliant" and DO respect my right to be pro-active in my own healthcare. (The specialist is up-to-date and acknowledges that my decisions reflect legitimate findings.) Still holding my breath waiting for "personalized medicine" though.

More evidence that MERS is loose in the environment. From CIDRAP:

Jordanian, Saudi camels have MERS-CoV-like antibodies

In one of two studies published in Eurosurveillance, Jordanian and European researchers reported that 11 of 11 camels tested in Jordan had MERS-CoV–like antibodies. Tests in goats, sheep, and cows were negative, with the exception of preliminary tests in six sheep, which were contradicted by further tests.

In the other study, another international team reported that 280 of 310 dromedary camels from various parts of Saudi Arabia had antibodies to MERS-CoV or a very similar virus, but further tests suggested that some of the results represented cross-reactions to bovine coronavirus (BCoV). Sheep, goats, cattle, and chickens all tested negative.

...[Saudi] Using a MERS-CoV pseudoparticle neutralization test, the authors found that 280 of 310 camels (90%) were seropositive, whereas all the other animals tested negative. The camel results differed by age: 47 of 65 (72%) of camels under 1 year old tested positive, compared with 233 of 245 (95%) of older camels. …these animals are getting infected within the first year of life...

MERS-COV CAUSE YET TO BE ASCERTAINED: WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that it’s not sure at this stage what type of contact with animals, or human behaviour results in the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection.

It has also said that in the absence of any evidence on how people acquire the infection and in view of limited knowledge on the disease and its transmission, it’s advisable that everyone should maintain good personal hygiene.

Nearly identical MERS-CoV strains found in camels, humans

Researchers today reported that dromedary camels on a farm in Qatar were infected with a strain of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) nearly identical to that found in two people associated with the farm. The findings point to an outbreak that involved both camels and humans, but they don't answer the key question of whether camels infected humans or the other way around.

…."We cannot conclude whether the people on the farm were infected by the camels or vice versa, or if a third source was responsible," the report says.

…'Strongly suggest cross-species transmission'
In an accompanying commentary, Neil M. Ferguson, DPhil, and Maria D. Van Kerhove, PhD, both of Imperial College London, wrote that the close similarity between the human and camel isolates "strongly suggests cross-species transmission, but present data do not inform on the direction of that transmission."

They comment that "the slow rate of growth of the underlying epidemic, whether in camels, human beings, or other reservoir species" represents "a particular paradox." Environmental contamination is one possibility that may explain "the persistence of MERS-CoV in the absence of an explosive epidemic."

Ferguson and Van Kerkhove observe that the virus can spread from person to person, but whether it can achieve sustained transmission is still unknown.

"If self-sustained transmission is not yet underway, intensive control and risk-reduction measures targeting affected animal species and their handlers might eliminate the virus from the human population," they wrote. "Conversely, if zoonotic exposure causes only a small fraction of human infections, then even intensive veterinary control efforts would have little effect on cases in people."

Mers-CoV: Pregnant Woman Dies after Delivery in UAE's First Virus Death

A woman in Abu Dhabi has died after giving birth to a baby by caesarean section after being diagnosed with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (Mers-CoV).

The World Health Organisation confirmed three additional cases of the virus in the United Arab Emirates - the woman's husband and eight-year-old son were also diagnosed with the disease.

…None of the family members have travel history, contact with a known confirmed case or any contact with animals. Further investigations into close contacts of the family are ongoing.

Saudi Arabia Reports Two More MERS Coronavirus Cases, Virus Confirmed In Dromedary Camels

Saudi Arabian health officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of an additional two laboratory-confirmed cases of infection with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), according to a WHO news release today.

According to the release, the cases are as follows:

The first case is a 51 year-old female from Saudi Arabia, living in Jawf province with onset of symptoms on 20 November 2013. She has underlying chronic disease and was transferred to Riyadh for treatment in an intensive care unit. She had no reported contact with animals. The epidemiological investigation is ongoing. The second case is a 26 year-old female who is a non-Saudi healthcare worker in Riyadh. She is asymptomatic. She had reported contact with a 37 year-old male laboratory confirmed case that was reported to WHO on 21 November 2013.

This brings the global total of confirmed MERS-CoV cases to 165, including 71 fatalities.

Saudi Reports 4 New Cases Of MERS Virus, 1 Fatal

The new infections bring the worldwide total of confirmed cases to 170 with 72 deaths, the WHO said.

Four more people in Saudi Arabia have been infected with the SARS-like Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus and one of them – an elderly man – has died, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.

The new infections, including in two health workers from Riyadh who have not reported any adverse symptoms, bring the worldwide total of confirmed cases of the respiratory disease to 170 with 72 deaths, the United Nations health agency said.

MERS first emerged in the Middle East in September 2012 and is from the same family as the SARS virus, can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia.

Cases have been reported in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Tunisia as well as in several countries in Europe…

6 more MERS cases reported, total confirmed cases at 176 with 74 deaths. GREAT article linked below, worth reading - says Saudi Arabia is dropping the ball on MERS.
NOTE fatality rates: MERS-44%; H7N9-32%; 1918-19 "Spanish" flu-5% (with 50 million dead).

Six New Cases Of MERS Virus Hit Saudi Arabia, UAE

The total confirmed cases of the respiratory disease has reached 176, of which 74 have died, the WHO said.

MERS and H7N9: A Tale of Two Outbreaks

…H7N9 cases dropped off sharply over the summer and rose again in the fall. Meanwhile, MERS cases have continued, most of them in Saudi Arabia but with a few in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

… MERS was first identified in Saudi Arabia in September 2012, about 170 people have caught it, and around 75 of them have died of it.

Meanwhile, between the first announcement on H7N9 on March 31 and December 20, the European Centre for Disease Control reports 147 confirmed cases and 47 deaths.

Those are negligible numbers. You are more likely to win the lottery than to contract either disease. But health workers worry about them, partly because they both kill a high proportion of those infected: roughly 44 per cent with MERS and 32 per cent with H7N9.

Those are not negligible numbers, and if either virus figures out how to jump effectively from human to human, it could become the next Spanish flu. The new diseases are therefore useful as tests of the global health system, …

…The Chinese have reported every case of H7N9 since last spring, including a recent seasonal surge of cases that even turned up in Hong Kong. They have also flooded research journals with hundreds of scientific papers on the virus, and even published a risk analysis in one Chinese journal saying H7N9 could trigger a new pandemic. Regional papers often provide details on local cases that don't get covered in national news reports.

Thanks to this openness, the world scientific community has learned a lot about H7N9, including the frustrating fact that it hardly bothers poultry at all.

…Meanwhile, the Saudis have been telling the world as little as possible though MERS has even worse potential.

…almost two years after the first MERS cases, we still have no idea how people contract this disease. We know that camels and other livestock carry antibodies to it, and it seems to be originally a bat virus, but just how humans contract MERS (except from one another) remains a mystery.

…Governments and international health agencies may fear epidemics and pandemics, but what they really dread is political embarrassment. To avoid that awful outcome, they will shrug off any number of deaths. As German physician and politician Rudolf Virchow observed long ago, "Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale."

Sometimes it is medical malpractice on a very, very large scale.

Another MERS case in the UAE brings the total to 177 lab confirmed cases with 74 deaths.

UAE reports new Mers virus case

The UAE has reported a new case of the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus, this time a 33 year-old male healthcare worker in Dubai, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

…Globally, from September 2012 to date, WHO has been informed of a total of 177 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection with MERS-CoV, including 74 deaths.

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.

Saudi Arabia says MERS virus cases top 300
www.aljazeera.com...

Saudi Arabia said it had discovered 14 more cases of the potentially deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in the kingdom, bringing the total number to 313.

A health ministry statement on Friday said the new cases had been reported in the capital Riyadh, the coastal city of Jeddah and in Mecca in the past 24 hours.

Authorities had also registered five more deaths due to the virus, it said.

The jump in cases is of particular concern because Saudi Arabia will host pilgrims from around the world in July during the Muslim month of Ramadan, as well as in early October when millions of worshippers perform the annual Haj.

In total, 92 people have died of MERS in Saudi Arabia, the ministry said on its website.

Saudi Arabia has witnessed a jump in the rate of infection in recent weeks, with many of the new cases recorded in Jeddah, the kingdom's second-largest city.

A large proportion of the people infected are healthcare workers. MERS emerged in the Middle East in 2012 and is from the same family as the SARS virus, which killed around 800 people worldwide after first appearing in China in 2002.

It seems to be well entrenched and growing over there...

a reply to: Hx3_1963

It seems to be well entrenched and growing over there...

Yes. Disturbing how those pesky zoonoses get around. More news....

First MERS infection detected in Egypt

Egypt recorded its first MERS infection after a person who arrived from Saudi Arabia tested positive for the virus, state media reported on Saturday.

MERS infections have killed 92 people in Saudi Arabia, where the coronavirus was first detected in humans in 2012.

….The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus which erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died.

….A recent study said the virus has been “extraordinarily common” in camels for at least 20 years, and may have been passed directly from the animals to humans.

It has spread to several countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia.

MERS virus kills 92 Saudis; Egypt reports its first case

Saudi Arabia announced hours earlier that the MERS death toll in the kingdom had reached 92.

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.”

Deadly MERS virus spreading out of control in Saudi Arabia, leaps to Egypt as global pandemic begins

Saturday, April 26, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

www.naturalnews.com...

(NaturalNews) It has long been recognized by intelligent observers that a global superbug pandemic is inevitable. Humanity has created the perfect conditions for it: global nutritional deficiencies, weakened immune systems, high population density, high-speed international travel and systemic abuse of antibiotics by medical professionals. Drug-resistant superbugs like MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) are 100% immune to every conventional medical treatment in existence. There is no antibiotic, no vaccine, no drug and no treatment practiced by western medicine that can stop these bugs... and infections are deadly.

Now we've learned they're spreading out of control in Saudi Arabia, following an explosive pandemic pattern that has infectious disease experts sounding the alarm.

Ian MacKay, an associate professor at the Australia Infectious Diseases Research Centre at The University of Queensland, is now warning about where this might be headed. Over the last 30 days, MERS cases in Saudi Arabia have exploded from just 1-3 per day to over 10 per day, showing a worrisome trend.(1)

"MERS is a particularly nasty disease for those who already have a disease that is chronic," writes Ian MacKay on his blog. (2) "These include diabetes, kidney disease, heart disease, hypertension, lung disease, obesity, malignancy and those who smoke or use steroids."

An alarming 140 cases have been found in April alone, and more MERS cases have been reported so far in 2014 than during the entire year of 2013.

Healthcare workers increasingly infected: 7% death rate reported

...Getting scarier by the day...