Saudi MERS outbreaks killed 23 over four months, says UN's health agency
Outbreaks of the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), also known as camel flu, have claimed the lives of nearly two dozen people in Saudi Arabia in four months.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that the deaths were among 75 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV) between January 21 and May 31.
One outbreak in February hit a private hospital in Hafr al-Batin region, where the patient passed the disease to three health workers.
There was another cluster of six cases in a hospital in the capital Riyadh in the same month. Two other clusters affected households in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah and Najran.
Three MERS cases have been reported this year outside Saudi Arabia. The United Arab Emirates and Oman each reported a case, while in Malaysia a man fell ill after drinking unpasteurized camel milk during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
The latest figures take the number of confirmed cases to 2,220 since September 2012, including 1,844 from Saudi Arabia. It also takes the total number of deaths from the disease to 790 since it was first diagnosed in humans six years ago.
MERS-CoV is a member of a virus family ranging from the common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
It appears to have emerged in humans in Saudi Arabia in 2012, although it has been traced in camels, the source of the infection, back to at least 1983.
The disease often infects people with an underlying condition such as diabetes, renal failure or chronic lung disease.
Susceptible people should avoid contact with suspected cases and with camels, and anyone who has contact with animals should wash their hands before and afterwards, the WHO said. Everyone should also avoid drinking raw camel milk or eating undercooked meat.
In recent years, MERS has occurred in Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, Europe, and in the US, with no treatment or preventative medicines to fight disease.
The 2015 MERS outbreak in South Korea raised an alarm as the infection spread from one patient to over 181 people, resulting in hospital closings, severe economic impact and more than 30 deaths.
A cousin of SARS, MERS causes coughing, fever, pneumonia and kidney failure, but it does not appear to be as contagious as SARS, which killed some 800 people in a 2003 epidemic.
According to the WHO, the disease has an overall mortality rate of 35 percent.
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