Infectious Disease

MERS Watch: Saudi Deaths Top 100

Published: Apr 28, 2014
By Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today

The Middle East coronavirus outbreak in Saudi Arabia has now killed more than 100 victims, the country's health ministry said.

After an active weekend, in which the country registered 26 new cases and 10 deaths, the toll since the virus was first recognized in 2012 stood at 339 cases and 102 deaths.

The ministry had not reported any new cases or deaths as of 11 p.m. Saudi time Monday.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization is reporting eight cases in the United Arab Emirates, all related to a healthcare-associated cluster in Abu Dhabi. The agency said all the patients are well but are in isolation in the hospital.

The cluster originated with a 45-year-old paramedic in Abu Dhabi who died April 10; screening of contacts has turned up an additional 23 cases, according to WHO reports.

The WHO relies on data from the health departments of United Nations members, and its reports have often been delayed. As of April 26, the agency said it was only aware of 261 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection with MERS, including 93 deaths.

In Saudi Arabia, the weekend saw 26 cases, 10 reported on Saturday and 16 on Sunday. The 10 deaths included five people whose cases had already been reported. Specifically:

  • Four cases were reported in the capital of Riyadh
  • One patient was registered in Mecca
  • Six cases were reported in the northern city of Tabuk
  • 15 cases were reported in the port city of Jeddah, where a large healthcare-associated cluster has been underway


Seven patients have no symptoms, eight are in stable condition, and six are intensive care, the Saudi health ministry reported on its website, and five of the new cases have died.

One of the cases reported Sunday was a 9-month-old boy who died of the disease in Riyadh, the ministry said.

All six of the cases in Tabuk were doctors and nurses at the same clinic, the ministry said, including two with symptomatic disease and four without symptoms.

Also over the weekend, news reports said an Egyptian man who had been working in Saudi Arabia is being treated for pneumonia in Cairo and is in stable condition with confirmed MERS.

The spike in cases in the Middle East has alarmed observers, but a senior official in Saudi Arabia said the reason is simple -- doctors are testing more people. In a news story in Science, Saudi deputy health ministerZiad Memish, MD, said that in the first 2 years of the virus, the country tested 20,000 people, mostly those with severe respiratory symptoms.

"Just in the last weeks, we tested 5,000 people," Memish told Science.
Another possible explanation is that the virus has changed in a way that increases its ability to jump from person to person. But a researcher in Germany says that does not appear to have happened.

In a post on ProMED, an email exchange maintained by the International Society for Infectious Diseases,Christian Drosten, MD, of the University of Bonn Medical Centre in Germany reported sequencing the virus from three patients early in the Jeddah outbreak.

The three are highly similar and show no evidence of major changes, Drosten wrote. In particular, the genetic sequence of the section of the spike gene that is thought to influence the virus's ability to spread is identical to the same site in other known MERS sequences, he and a colleague found.

MERS, Ebola, Measles, and Mumps: There is no shortage of infectious disease news, but to keep track of the coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East, MedPage Today's daily MERS Watch will update you as the numbers change.

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