The first case of MERS-CoV, a dangerous respiratory virus that originated in the Middle East and has a high death rate, has been confirmed in the United States, officials said Friday.
The person infected with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a health care provider who had travelled to Riyadh for work, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
The name, gender and location of the patient were not disclosed. ‘New diseases can be just a plane ride away,’ Anne Schuchat, director of CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters. The patient is being cared for in an Indiana hospital and is ‘isolated in stable condition,’ said Schuchat, adding that lab tests confirmed the infection Friday.
There is no cure for MERS-CoV, no medicine for treating it and no vaccine to prevent it. The virus causes fever, breathing difficulties and can lead to pneumonia and death in some patients. According to the CDC, 401 people in 12 countries have been confirmed to have MERS-CoV, including the US patient. The latest death toll announced by Saudi health authorities is 107. Some cases have spread among family members and in a hospital setting, but sustained transmission among the general public is rare, the CDC said.
Officials are trying to track down people who were near the patient, who on April 24 flew by plane from Riyadh to London, and then flew to Chicago, Illinois, where the patient boarded a public bus to Indiana. However, the CDC declined to make public the name of the airline or any other details about the person's trip, and said that the Department of Homeland Security was working on locating people who traveled near the patient.--Source: The Nation