Middle East Respiratory Syndrome

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome

Subject: Science & tech

Context: Women’s rights activists say feminism in the South Ko had been simmering under the surface, but it became more prominent sometime in 2015 following the outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, in the country linked to a Korean man returning from the Middle East.

Concept:

• Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is a viral respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS‐CoV) that was first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012.
• Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that can cause diseases ranging from the common cold to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
• Typical MERS symptoms include fever, cough and shortness of breath. Pneumonia is common, but not always present. Gastrointestinal symptoms, including diarrhoea, have also been reported.
• Some laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS-CoV infection are reported as asymptomatic, meaning that they do not have any clinical symptoms, yet they are positive for MERS-CoV infection following a laboratory test.
• Most of these asymptomatic cases have been detected following aggressive contact tracing of a laboratory-confirmed case.
• Although most of human cases of MERS-CoV infections have been attributed to human-to-human infections in health care settings, current scientific evidence suggests that dromedary camels are a major reservoir host for MERS-CoV and an animal source of MERS infection in humans.
• However, the exact role of dromedaries in transmission of the virus and the exact route(s) of transmission are unknown.
• The virus does not seem to pass easily from person to person unless there is close contact, such as occurs when providing unprotected care to a patient.
• Health care associated outbreaks have occurred in several countries, with the largest outbreaks seen in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and the Republic of Korea.