Health Alerts

The decline in the reporting of new MERS Co-V infections has been attributed to ‘addressing knowledge gaps with regard to transmission, enhancing surveillance, and strengthening the ability to detect cases early and contain outbreaks through improved infection prevention and control measures in hospitals’, in a Research Letter published in the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Disease journal on July 8 and summarised by the WHO. The case count since MERS-CoV was first identified in 2012 until May 31 this year rose to 2,442 infections and it has claimed 842 lives. The article also notes that the virus ‘is currently circulating in dromedary camels in Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia; however, most cases of human infection have been reported in the Arabian Peninsula’. Read more.