Robert Roos 
News Editor
News Editor
May 22, 2013 (CIDRAP News) – Saudi Arabia reported today that a
foreigner died yesterday of a MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome
coronavirus) infection, while health officials in Jordan offered new
details—some of them puzzling—about a hospital cluster of cases that
occurred there in April 2012.
In a brief statement, the Saudi Ministry of Health (MOH) announced
"the demise of a non-Saudi case of novel Coronavirus in al-Qassim
region," a province in the central part of the country. The person was
hospitalized a few days ago with a severe respiratory illness and died
yesterday, the statement said.
The MOH gave no information on the patient's age, gender,
nationality, previous health status, occupation, residency status, or
possible exposures to the virus. The statement noted that no new cases
have emerged in the past 5 days in the Al-Ahsa region in Eastern
province, site of a hospital-centered MERS-CoV outbreak involving 22
cases.
The announcement comes a day after a press report that a World
Health Organization (WHO) expert, Anthony Mounts, MD, expressed concern
that guest workers in the Middle East could spread the novel virus to
their home countries, particularly India and the Philippines.
The WHO said today that the death toll in the Al-Ahsa outbreak has
increased to 10 with the death of a patient whose case was announced
earlier. The WHO gave no other information about the patient, and it
wasn't immediately clear if the death is the same one that was noted by
the Saudi MOH in a May 20 statement.
Today's WHO statement also offered some details on the two
confirmed MERS-CoV cases and one probable case in a Tunisian family,
which were first reported by the media 2 days ago. They were the first
known cases in Tunisia.
The probable case was in a 66-year-old man who got sick 3 days
after returning from a trip to Qatar and Saudi Arabia on May 3, the WHO
said. After being hospitalized, he died on May 10. Initial lab tests for
the virus were negative, the agency reported.
The two confirmed cases involved the man's 34-year-old son and
35-year-old daughter, who had mild respiratory illnesses and were not
hospitalized, the WHO said. Officials are still investigating the
outbreak and monitoring the patients' close contacts for signs of
illness.
The WHO said the global count for MERS-CoV stood at 43 cases with
21 deaths, the same as cited by a WHO official via Twitter yesterday. As
of this writing, the agency has not yet noted the fatal case announced
by the Saudi health ministry today.
Jordanian cluster
Details on the Jordanian case cluster were provided yesterday in an online report from the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, published by the WHO's Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean.
Details on the Jordanian case cluster were provided yesterday in an online report from the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, published by the WHO's Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean.
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