Health officials reported the second U.S. case of
the mysterious new Middle East respiratory syndrome virus, or MERS, on
Monday. Like the first case, it’s in a health care worker who traveled
from Saudi Arabia.
Here are six things you need to know about MERS:
It’s new.
MERS was first seen in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Since then it has spread to 16 countries, most in the Middle East but also in Europe and Asia and now including
the United States. It’s a coronavirus, a distant relative of the SARS —
severe acute respiratory syndrome virus — that infected more than 8,000
people around the world and killed 774 before it was stopped in 2004.
You can expect more US cases.
"This
is unwelcome, but not unexpected," Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention Director Dr. Tom Frieden says. Health officials note that
just about any disease is just a plane ride away. But most Americans are
at very low risk of ever becoming infected. In 2003, eight SARS cases
were confirmed in the U.S., all of them in travelers who were infected
overseas and who did not infect anyone else.
It can be deadly.
WHO
reports more than 530 confirmed cases and 174 deaths since the virus
was identified in 2012. It’s killed between a quarter and a third of
victims, which is a very high death rate for an infectious disease. But
health experts say as officials look more closely for people infected
with MERS they are finding milder cases, which takes the mortality rate
down. Most who die have been either elderly or had another illness, such
as diabetes or kidney failure. MERS
It doesn’t spread easily.
Health officials have closely studied the known patients, and the people who become infected usually have been in close and prolonged contact.
One-fifth of the cases have been among health care workers who were
treating patients intensively. There’s been no documented spread on an
airplane, for instance. A patient in France who died infected a person
who shared his hospital room, and family clusters have been reported
from Saudi Arabia.
"We believe
that if good infection control precautions are used during healthcare
the risk to healthcare workers is also exceedingly low," says Dr.
William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University, an infectious diseases
expert. That includes wearing masks, gowns and gloves when treating
patients.
There’s no treatment.
There’s
no vaccine against MERS, although some groups are working on one, and
antiviral drugs don’t appear to be of much use against it, either. The
CDC has told U.S. hospitals to take strict precautions if someone shows up with symptoms. Patient care is mostly support, such as providing oxygen or breathing care.
No one knows where it came from.
The latest research suggests camels,
but many patients have had no known contact with camels. Camel meat or
milk might be a source, and the virus can live on surfaces and
potentially could spread when people touch an infected surface. SARS was
eventually traced to an animal called a civet, often sold in Asian
markets as food.
Some health
officials say it's possible MERS has been circulating but no one knew
what it was because there wasn't a test for it. Many respiratory
diseases are never diagnosed.
“While
experts do not yet know exactly how this virus is spread, CDC advises
Americans to help protect themselves from respiratory illnesses by
washing hands often, avoiding close contact with people who are sick,
avoiding touching their eyes, nose and/or mouth with unwashed hands, and
disinfecting frequently touched surfaces,” the agency advises.
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