NEJM: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Infections in Health Care Workers

[editing below is mine]

New England Journal of Medicine
Correspondence
August 7, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc1308698

To The Editor:
Excerpt:

We recently identified seven health care workers with MERS-CoV infection (two of whom were asymptomatic and five of whom had mild upper respiratory tract symptoms) through screening of single sample nasopharyngeal swabs by means of a real-time reverse-transcriptase–polymerase-chain-reaction (RT-PCR) amplification test, with amplification targeting both the upstream E protein gene (upE) and open reading frame 1a (ORF1a) for confirmation. A patient was confirmed as having MERS-CoV infection if both assays were positive.
 -snip-
All the infected nurses were women, and all had previously been healthy except for one who had diabetes. Two had asymptomatic cases of MERS-CoV infection, one had only a runny nose, and four reported mild symptoms. They did not require treatment, recovered fully within a week, and remained healthy on follow-up. On daily follow-up PCR testing, six of seven tested positive for MERS-CoV on day 2 and negative on day 3; one remained positive until day 8. There was no history of exposure to animals or to persons with MERS-CoV infection in the community, and no subsequent cases of MERS-CoV were associated with these seven health care workers.
-snip-
Ziad A. Memish, M.D.
Ministry of Health, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
zmemish@yahoo.com
Alimuddin I. Zumla, Ph.D.
University College London, London, United Kingdom
Abdullah Assiri, M.D.
Ministry of Health, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
5 References
 
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1308698?query=featured_home