United Arab Emirates

Kuwait Reports First MERS Coronavirus Cases.

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Kuwait reported its first two cases of the deadly MERS coronavirus on Wednesday, the fifth Gulf Arab country where the strain has emerged since the outbreak began in neighbouring Saudi Arabia last year.

kuwait mers

A 47-year-old man is in a critical condition, Kuwaiti state news agency KUNA said, citing a statement from the Health Ministry. It gave no further details.

A second patient, a 52-year-old Kuwaiti citizen, recently travelled overseas, KUNA said in another report later on Wednesday, adding he had no contact with the first patient.

The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia. It has been reported in people in the Gulf, France, Germany, Italy, Tunisia and Britain. Oman reported its first case last month and the patient died on Sunday.

Saudi Arabia, where the vast majority of confirmed cases have been recorded, has confirmed 127 cases of the disease, of which 53 have died, since it was discovered in the kingdom more than a year ago.

Cases have also been reported in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The World Health Organization said in August the number of confirmed infections worldwide in the year from September 2012 had been 102. Almost half of those infected had died.

Scientists say they believe dromedary camels in the Middle East may be the animal “reservoir” that is fuelling the outbreak.

Clinical features and virological analysis of a case of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus infection.

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Background

The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is an emerging virus involved in cases and case clusters of severe acute respiratory infection in the Arabian Peninsula, Tunisia, Morocco, France, Italy, Germany, and the UK. We provide a full description of a fatal case of MERS-CoV infection and associated phylogenetic analyses.

Methods

We report data for a patient who was admitted to the Klinikum Schwabing (Munich, Germany) for severe acute respiratory infection. We did diagnostic RT-PCR and indirect immunofluorescence. From time of diagnosis, respiratory, faecal, and urine samples were obtained for virus quantification. We constructed a maximum likelihood tree of the five available complete MERS-CoV genomes.

Findings

A 73-year-old man from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, was transferred to Klinikum Schwabing on March 19, 2013, on day 11 of illness. He had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2008, and had received several lines of treatment. The patient died on day 18, due to septic shock. MERS-CoV was detected in two samples of bronchoalveolar fluid. Viral loads were highest in samples from the lower respiratory tract (up to 1·2 × 106 copies per mL). Maximum virus concentration in urine samples was 2691 RNA copies per mL on day 13; the virus was not present in the urine after renal failure on day 14. Stool samples obtained on days 12 and 16 contained the virus, with up to 1031 RNA copies per g (close to the lowest detection limit of the assay). One of two oronasal swabs obtained on day 16 were positive, but yielded little viral RNA (5370 copies per mL). No virus was detected in blood. The full virus genome was combined with four other available full genome sequences in a maximum likelihood phylogeny, correlating branch lengths with dates of isolation. The time of the common ancestor was halfway through 2011. Addition of novel genome data from an unlinked case treated 6 months previously in Essen, Germany, showed a clustering of viruses derived from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Interpretation

We have provided the first complete viral load profile in a case of MERS-CoV infection. MERS-CoV might have shedding patterns that are different from those of severe acute respiratory syndrome and so might need alternative diagnostic approaches.

Source: lancet

 

MERS Coronavirus — An Update.

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A novel coronavirus originating in the Middle East and exported to Europe causes severe respiratory disease with a high case-fatality rate.

The first report of a novel coronavirus causing human infection on the Arabian Peninsula was received in September 2012. By June 7, 2013, the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) — as is it now known — had caused 55 confirmed cases, all of which were linked to four countries: Saudi Arabia (40 cases), Qatar, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. Four additional countries — the U.K., Italy, France, and Tunisia — have reported cases in returning travelers and their close contacts. To date, no cases have been reported in the U.S.

Person-to-person spread in nosocomial environments, both to other patients and to healthcare personnel, has been documented. The median age of patients is 56 years; 72% are female. The incubation period is now estimated to be 9 to 12 days (an increase from the 1–9 days initially described), and the case-fatality rate is 56%.

Because tests of upper respiratory samples have sometimes yielded negative results for patients later confirmed to be infected, testing of lower respiratory tract specimens (e.g., from cough or bronchial washing) with a newly approved polymerase chain reaction assay is recommended.

Comment: In new outbreaks, it is common for cases with the shortest incubation period to surface first, and for estimates of incubation periods to increase. Also, it would appear that respiratory symptoms may be mild or even absent at the outset of illness caused by the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. Clinicians should be alert to the possibility of infection with this pathogen and should contact the CDC if they encounter patients who develop severe acute lower respiratory illness within 14 days after returning from the endemic area — or are close contacts of such individuals. Current information and guidance are available on the CDC’s MERS website.

Source:  Journal Watch Infectious Diseases

 

 

 

CDC Issues Update on Novel SARS-like Coronavirus.

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Reports of new cases of the novel SARS-like coronavirus, now known as MERS-CoV, indicate continued risk for transmission in the Arabian Peninsula, according to an update from MMWR.

To date, MERS-CoV has been confirmed in 55 people, 31 of whom have died. All cases have been linked to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, or the United Arab Emirates. Infections among close contacts of cases, including healthcare personnel and family members, “provide clear evidence of human-to-human transmission,” MMWR says.

The CDC recommends that MERS-CoV be considered in people who develop severe acute lower respiratory illness within 14 days of traveling from the Arabian Peninsula or nearby areas. The virus should also be considered for close contacts of symptomatic travelers. To improve detection, specimens should be taken from multiple locations (for example, the nasopharynx and lower respiratory tract); the CDC is performing testing.

 

Source: MMWR 

WHO urges information sharing over novel coronavirus.

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) has urged countries with possible cases of novel coronavirus to share information.

The move comes after Saudi Arabia said the development of diagnostic tests had been delayed by patent rights on the NCoV virus by commercial laboratories.

Twenty-two deaths and 44 cases have been reported worldwide since 2012, the WHO says.

NCoV is from the same family of viruses as the one that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars).

An outbreak of Sars in 2003 killed about 770 people. However, NCoV and Sars are distinct from each other, the WHO says.

The virus first emerged in Saudi Arabia, which is where most cases have since arisen.

Saudi Deputy Health Minister Ziad Memish raised his concerns at the World Health Assembly in Geneva.

“We are still struggling with diagnostics and the reason is that the virus was patented by scientists and is not allowed to be used for investigations by other scientists,” he said.

“I think strongly that the delay in the development of … diagnostic procedures is related to the patenting of the virus.”

‘Uncertainty’

WHO chief Margaret Chan expressed dismay at the information.

“Why would your scientists send specimens out to other laboratories on [sic] a bilateral manner and allow other people to take intellectual property rights on a new disease?” she asked.

“Any new disease is full of uncertainty.”

She is urging the WHO’s 194 member states to only share “viruses and specimens with WHO collaborating centres… not in a bilateral manner.”

She added: “I will follow it up. I will look at the legal implications together with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. No IP (intellectual property) should stand in the way of you, the countries of the world, to protect your people.”

WHO’s assistant director-general for health security, Dr Keiji Fukuda, said his agency had also been “struggling with diagnostics” because of property rights concerns and ill-defined international rules for sharing such materials, AP news agency reported.

Cases of novel coronavirus have been detected in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, the UK and France.

Twenty-two of the 44 cases reported worldwide have been in Saudi Arabia, WHO says.

Out of the 22 deaths, 10 of them have been in the kingdom, it adds.

Source: BBC

e�Tr 8(� �� noticing the movement of the bars when observing the smallest image – but they were slower at detecting movement in the larger images.

 

Michael Melnick of the University of Rochester, who was part of the research team said the results were very clear.

“From previous research, we expected that all participants would be worse at detecting the movement of large images, but high IQ individuals were much, much worse.

The authors explain that in most scenarios, background movement is less important than small moving objects in the foreground, for example driving a car, walking down a hall or moving your eyes across the room.

People with higher IQs appear to be able to concentrate better

As a person’s IQ increases, so too does his or her ability to filter out distracting background motion and concentrate on the foreground.

In an initial study on 12 people, there was a 64% correlation between motion suppression and IQ scores. In this larger study on 53 people, a 71% correlation was found.

In contrast, previous research on the link between intelligence and reaction times, colour discrimination and sensitivity to pitch found only a 20-40% correlation.

But the ability to ignore background movements is not the only indicator of intelligence.

“Because intelligence is such a broad construct, you can’t really track it back to one part of the brain,” says Duje Tadin, who also worked on the study.

“But since this task is so simple and so closely linked to IQ, it may give us clues about what makes a brain more efficient, and, consequently, more intelligent.

“We know from prior research which parts of the brain are involved in visual suppression of background motion.

“This new link to intelligence provides a good target for looking at what is different about the neural processing, what’s different about the neurochemistry, what’s different about the neurotransmitters of people with different IQs.”

Source: BBC