A
Deadly Virus Is Spreading
Around Saudi Arabia And It
Might Be About
To Go Global
Reported
cases of MERS have surged in Saudi Arabia in 2014 and no one seems to
know why.
23
April, 2014
Saudi
Arabia has been accused by health care experts of obscuring
information about an outbreak of the deadly Middle East Respiratory
Syndrome (MERS), after a surge in reported cases of the virus this
month.
Over
the last 30 days, MERS cases in Saudi Arabia have swelled from one
to three daily to more than 10 reported cases each day, according to
Ian MacKay, an associate professor at the Australia Infectious
Diseases Research Centre at The University of Queensland. The first
cases were reported in Jeddah and then spread to other areas around
the country, raising alarm over how the royal kingdom will contain a
virus for which no known treatment exists.
“We
need the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirate’s health
authorities to take the stage and help us understand what’s going
on,” said MacKay. “In 2014 so far we’ve had more cases than in
all of 2013.”
In
April alone, there have been more than 140 reported cases so far,
though MacKay warns that information about the cases is incomplete
at best and it has been difficult for experts to get exact figures
on the spread of the virus.
Well. That happened. #mers
Saudi
officials have refused to confirm whether their tests suggest that
the virus is mutating leading to greater human-to-human infection
rates, and will not even comment on whether such tests have been
conducted. A statement released by the World Health Organization
confirmed that they were not receiving timely data on the spread of
MERS, as they did not have the latest infection count. On
their website they advise,
” WHO encourages all Member States to continue their surveillance
for severe acute respiratory infections (SARI) and to carefully
review any unusual patterns.”
Saudi
Arabia has done little to answer criticism that it is mishandling a
potential health crisis. On Monday, Saudi Health Minister Abdullah
al-Rabiah was dismissed just days after visiting hospitals in Jeddah
to calm public panic over the spread of the virus. His replacement
was photographed days later appearing in hospitals, butwithout
the surgical goggles virologists
recommend to help prevent the spread of the virus.
MacKay
said that concerns the virus had mutated were based on two clusters,
one in Jeddah and the other in Abu Dhabi. He said that the outbreaks
could be based on poor infection control and prevention protocols
among health care workers, or that Saudi Arabia could be experiencing
a mutation that makes human-to-human infection spread more widely.
Until now, health professionals have argued that camels transmit MERS
more easily to humans than humans do to one another, but that could
be changing.
“There
is too little virological information. An emerging virus is called
that because it’s still ‘finding its way’ in a new host. Right
now the MERS-CoV’s natural host seems to be the camel and then it
makes forays into humans when conditions are right. Each and every
time it does that there is a chance for the virus to evolve to become
better at replicating in and transmitting from humans instead of
camels. Because of that, an emerging virus needs to be carefully
watched and that is done by gene or genome sequencing,” said
MacKay.
In
an interview with NPR earlier this week, Michael Osterholm, director
of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the
University of Minnesota, said that once a virus readily transmits to
humans, there is greater concern for a worldwide outbreak.
“It
took us over a year to get the first hundred cases of this viral
infection,” Osterholm
told NPR. “Now
in just the last two weeks, we’ve had a hundred cases. … There’s
a major change occurring that cannot just be attributed to better
case detection. Something’s happening.”
Yemen,
Malaysia, the Philippines and Greece also reported their first cases
last week, all linked to travelers from the Gulf.
Concerns
voiced by global health professionals have been mounting as Saudi
Arabia approaches the Hajj the first week of October. More than one
million Muslims travel to Saudi Arabia each year to visit Mecca
during the holy pilgrimage, in past years they have come from 188
countries. Virologists fear that unless Saudi Arabia takes great
steps to ensure that they have contained and studied the MERS by
October, it could be risking spreading the virus globally
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