Tuesday 21 May 2013

Imported MERS death and 2 possible family cases in Tunisia.

It seems that up to 3 news cases of the MERS-CoV have
MERS-CoV coverage map
appeared in Tunisia (see updated map).ProMED (Archive# 20130520.1725864) crofsblog(multiple stories) and FluTrackers have more details and specifics.

According to a translated report, a 66M Tunisian citizen died after returning from the Saudi Arabia and Qatar, some of the "gulf states" (includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates). His two sons also have influenza-like illnesses, and they are positive for the MERS-CoV (Health Ministry via Kuwait News Agency report).


Its hard to tell but the (?)sons seem to be suffering a milder form of disease than perhaps we are used to hearing about. Which if so, once again raises the issues of how many mild cases are circulating that we are not hearing about, detecting or containing? Also I wonder how "close" these close contacts were in order to acquire infection and are any, more distant, contacts under observation-was 66M coughing and sneezing over his travel mates on the trip back from Tunisia?

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