A new SARS-like virus found in humans has continued to spread and take lives, according to CNN. The worldwide total of those infected with the MERS-CoV virus is currently at 49, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on May 29, with the latest deaths associated with the virus reported in Saudi Arabia.
Of the 49 infections across the world, the virus has resulted in 27 deaths, the organization said. The Saudi health ministry said May 29 that three people lost their lives from the virus in the country's eastern region.
The virus "is not a problem that any single affected country can keep to itself or manage all by itself," said Margaret Chan on May 27 in her closing remarks at the 66th World Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.
Earlier this month, the WHO said that "all of the European cases have had a direct or indirect connection to the Middle East," but in France and the U.K., "there has been limited local transmission among close contacts who had not been to the Middle East but had been in contact with a traveler recently returned from the Middle East." Many of the cases have occurred in on the Arabian Peninsula, but they emphasized that people have died of the infection elsewhere around the world.
A patient in France died on May 28 after having contracted the virus on a trip to the Middle East, the WHO said. Coronaviruses like MERS-CoV cause illness ranging from the common cold to SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, in addition to a variety of animal diseases. Yet the new MERS-CoV virus is not SARS.
MERS-CoV was given its name by the WHO: Middle East respiratory symptom coronavirus. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has said that it acts like a cold virus and attacks the upper respiratory system, but its symptoms are far deadlier than any cold, severe and can lead to kidney failure and pneumonia.
Chan said that health officials do not yet know how the virus spreads, which makes it difficult for scientists to prevent people from becoming infected. The WHO is calling it a "threat to the world." So far there are no reported cases in the U.S.
"This is a grave concern to us here internationally at WHO," Gregory Hartl of WHO said to CNN. "Because there are so many unknowns around the virus which so far has killed 55 percent of the confirmed cases." Researchers are currently looking to see if the virus was originally passed from animals to humans, like the SARS virus.
"I don't think we should be concerned of travel to the Middle East or to anywhere in the world right now," Dr. Mark Denison of Vanderbilt University said to CNN. "Most of the cases of the illnesses have been associated with the elderly or those with pre-existing or severe underlying medical conditions."
However, researchers are concerned about the virus because they do not know its origins or how it spreads, and therefore cannot yet make a vaccine for it.
