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The Ministry of Health of Saudi Arabia reported four locally acquired laboratory confirmed cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) as of October 31 of this year.
Photo/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
The cases were recorded from Riyadh (two cases), Al-Qassim (one case), and Makkah Al-Mukarramah (one case).
There were no reports of deaths.
According to the World Health OrganizationAll cases were non-health care workers, presented with fever, cough, and shortness of breath, and had comorbidities. Three of the cases had a history of contact with dromedary camels and consumption of their raw milk in the 14 days prior to the onset of symptoms. Three of the cases were male and the total age ranged from 23 to 74 years.
Since the first report of MERS-CoV in 2012, a total of 2,600 cases with 935 associated deaths have been reported from 27 countries, across all six WHO regions- Countries in or near the Arabian Peninsula that have reported cases of MERS-CoV: Bahrain, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Countries outside the Arabian Peninsula with travel-related MERS cases: Algeria, Austria, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malaysia, Netherlands, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, United Kingdom (UK) and United States of America (USA).
The majority of MERS-CoV cases (n = 2193; 84%) with 854 deaths, were reported from Saudi Arabia.
