RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia said Tuesday it’s consulting global experts on how to combat a deadly respiratory virus, as another case was reported in neighboring Jordan.
Specialists from Germany, France, Britain and the United States are helping tackle the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, Assistant Deputy Minister of Health Mohammad Zamakhshary said in a telephone interview in Riyadh Tuesday.
“Every effort is being made to understand its current behavior and any potential alteration in its behavior,” Zamakhshary said of the coronavirus that causes the illness. Authorities failed to adequately sense “the public panic” MERS has sparked and address it preemptively, he said.
The Ministry of Health said on April 21 that 12 more people tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the total number of reported cases in the kingdom to 261. At least 93 have died of the disease since it emerged in Saudi Arabia in September 2012, according to the World Health Organization.
In Jordan, a 25-year-old Saudi citizen tested positive for the disease and is in a stable condition, the state-run Petra news agency said Tuesday. The country registered two cases of MERS in 2012.
As it fights the outbreak, Saudi Arabia removed Health Minister Abdullah Al Rabeeah from office this week, replacing him on an acting basis with Labor Minister Adel Faqih.
Faqih toured a hospital in Jeddah Tuesday to check on coronavirus cases, and said the ministry is committed to transparency and to informing the media and public about developments related to the disease, the Saudi Gazette reported.
The Saudi health ministry sent text messages to the country’s 30 million residents last week to alert them to the dangers of the disease. The virus doesn’t spread easily between people, and no cases have been observed related to crowds, in schools or at football stadiums, the official Saudi Press Agency cited a ministry official as saying.
“We believe MERS is a zoonotic virus, meaning that the virus comes from animals, namely camels, and is transmitted to humans,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, a senior research fellow at Imperial College in London and a technical expert for the World Health Organization. “The virus can also be transmitted from human to human, which we have seen between family members and health-care workers caring for MERS patients.”
The virus has spread to southeast Asia, killing a Malaysian man who visited Saudi Arabia, the WHO said last week. A Filipino health-care worker returning from Abu Dhabi who initially tested positive for MERS was shown not to have the virus when a second test was carried out.
