Deadly camel virus remains a mystery
Print Edition
SAUDI Arabia has not yet traced the source of a mysterious camel virus, leaving many questions about a disease that has killed 346 people in the kingdom.
The lack of scientific evidence about how camels contract the virus, which causes an often fatal illness called Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in people, echoes wider concerns about the threat posed by animal-borne pathogens, like Ebola.
There is no cure or vaccine for MERS — a severe respiratory disease which causes cough, fever, breathing problems and can lead to pneumonia and kidney failure.
Yet studies of both camels and people infected with MERS in Saudi Arabia have given preliminary results that are helping authorities curb its spread, according to the scientist overseeing the work.
“Coming into close contact with the nasal secretions of camels is a major risk factor,” said Tariq Madani, head of the scientific advisory board of the Saudi health ministry command and control center set up in June to handle the outbreak.
“The main transmission is actually human to human,” he said.
MERS was first identified in humans in 2012 and is caused by a coronavirus from the same family as the one that caused a deadly outbreak of SARS in China in 2003. A total of 808 people in Saudi Arabia have been infected with it since it was discovered, and 346 of them have died.
The World Health Organization and leading global health specialists have criticized Saudi Arabia for failing to fully investigate the causes of MERS. Critics said Saudi delays contributed to the virus taking hold and spreading via travelers to 20 countries.
Madani, who was appointed after the former Saudi health minister and his deputy lost their jobs amid discontent about their handling of the outbreak, said an analysis of a large outbreak in Jeddah this year showed most people were infected in hospital.
“We found out that 97 percent of the cases were health care associated,” he said. “And 3 percent of them were primary cases who probably acquired the infection from contact with camels.”
Tighter infection controls in hospitals have contributed to a significant drop in cases recently, he said.
Tests of nasal and rectal swabs from camel imports arriving from the Horn of Africa found no traces of the MERS virus, Madani said, with 71 animals tested so far.
“Until now the camels we have examined have proven to be negative,” he said.
Asked whether this suggested the camels were being infected within Saudi Arabia’s borders, Madani said it was too early to reach conclusions.
Meanwhile, studies of 12 camels with which MERS patients had had contact showed six had the virus in their noses. Another study found that among a group of 36 workers in a camel slaughterhouse, 58 percent had MERS antibodies, indicating they had been infected with it at some point.
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