Spike in Saudi Mers cases sparks outbreak fears ahead of Hajj
Since March, at least nine people have been infected with the virus, a close but far more deadly cousin of Covid-19, the Saudi Arabian health ministry has said. Two have died.
Six of the most recent cases were in healthcare workers, who were infected from a single symptomatic patient in a hospital in Riyadh.
However, the source of infection remains unknown in two cases, sparking fears that the virus could be spreading in the wider Saudi community under the radar.
Airfinity, the disease analytics firm, warned the cases 'raise the risk of outbreaks and potential international spread amidst the upcoming Hajj when millions will gather.'
In several pictures of US President Donald Trump's visit to Riyadh earlier this week, waiters and other Saudi bystanders were seen wearing face masks.
The Hajj – which takes place every year in the beginning of June – sees more than three million people confined to a 12-square kilometre area and is famously a breeding ground of respiratory diseases like influenza and bacterial meningitis.
Since 2012, a total of 2613 laboratory-confirmed cases of Mers have been reported globally and more than 80 per cent of those occurred in Saudi Arabia. The case fatality rate is 36 per cent.
Covid-19's case fatality rate, by comparison, ranges between 0.1 per cent to 5 per cent, depending on the country and time period, according to John Hopkins University.
Mers is a zoonotic virus carried by camels and can be contracted via touching infected animals, consuming their meat or milk, or eating food that has been contaminated with camel faeces, urine, or spit.
Human to human transmission, via respiratory droplets, is generally confined to enclosed hospital settings but there have been instances of household and community transmission.
The main symptoms include a high temperature, cough, shortness of breath, muscle aches, diarrhoea, and being sick.
Most people who die from Mers have at least one underlying medical condition like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, or high blood pressure.
There is currently no vaccine available to protect against Mers, although clinical trials are currently underway.
Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Buzz Feed
6 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
Why IKEA Turned Away My Son: A Parent's Warning
In late June, a few days before Disability Pride Month began, I took my 7-year-old child on an outing to an Ikea store. As I filled out a waiver so he could enter the store's small play area, I noticed I was the only parent present. It turned out that parents typically drop off their children while they shop, but that wasn't an option for me. My son has a rare, severe form of epilepsy called Dravet syndrome, among other medical conditions, and he can't be without a grown-up carrying his seizure rescue medication, as I was. The scary reality is that around one in five children with Dravet syndrome die in childhood because the seizures can be so severe. There is currently no cure. I explained this to a staff member and told her that I'd need to be in the room with my child. She informed me that no parents were allowed into the play area. 'But isn't there a policy for kids with disabilities?' I asked. She told me a service dog could accompany a child, but a parent could not. I stopped signing the form. I said to the staff member, 'That's discrimination against kids with disabilities.' She didn't respond. I hadn't known about the store's play area before this visit, and I had been happy to see that it wasn't a playground ― just a space with toys like a train set and dart board. Since my son had a seizure at an indoor playground a year ago, I'd stopped taking him to them. But now, even this play space was not an option for him. My child and I were both upset. He loves going to Ikea to walk through the showroom and eat in the cafeteria ― a place open enough that it was the only indoor restaurant he ate in during our four years of masking during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have several Ikea furniture items, including bunk beds, a coat/shoe cubby and a toy chest. He helped us build them all. Since his severe seizures began about two years ago, he's had to change his life in significant ways. Heat, sports, just running around to play, illness and excitement have all become triggers for him. Summer is especially hard — on hot days, he can't be outside. In fact, we had driven the hour to Ikea in traffic just so he could walk and have a change of scenery in a large, air-conditioned space because the temperature outside was dangerous for him. I told him, 'This isn't OK.' He said, 'We should talk to someone.' I was proud of him. After talking to a few staff members, we spoke with a manager, who said he wasn't familiar with the policy, and he'd get back to me the next day. He didn't. Later, I looked online, and there was a section on the Ikea website directing caretakers of children with disabilities to start a conversation with the Ikea store manager about how the child can best have their needs accommodated in the play area. I was hopeful that when we went in the future, we could show the policy to the staff. However, that doesn't undo the pain my child felt after hearing that he wasn't welcome in that play space because of his disabilities. During the hour-long car ride home afterward, we talked a lot about discrimination. I reinforced that what happened wasn't OK, and that the more than 3 million kids with disabilities in our country deserve to be included. I told him about my older sister, his late aunt, who had microcephaly and faced various barriers to equal access too, like having to sit on the sidelines of playgrounds in her wheelchair. It upset me. When I was 10 in 1993, I read about new accessible playgrounds in an issue of Scholastic News, and I hoped we could build one for her. Sadly, she died a few weeks later, but in her memory, my family and I worked with the Cincinnati Parks Department to build an accessible playground. My son thought that was cool. I also explained that many groups of people face discrimination for reasons such as gender, race, sexual orientation, immigration status and more, and we need to be allies and stand up against all forms of discrimination. I also told him that one way to help is to make disabilities more visible and raise awareness, as we have done in his school class for the past three years. This June, for Dravet Syndrome Awareness Month, he and I held a neighborhood lemonade and cupcake fundraiser and donated money to the Dravet Syndrome Foundation, which helps fund the kind of critical epilepsy research that the Trump administration has recently cut. After our experience at Ikea, as one of his bedtime books, we re-read the picture book All the Way to the Top, about a child who protested and helped advocate for the Americans with Disabilities Act, which passed 35 years ago. Afterward, I told him about children with disabilities who went to Congress this summer, asking their leaders not to make it harder for them to go to the doctor and get the medicine and treatment they need. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump's domestic policy bill has since passed, and many people, including children with disabilities, will be harmed as a result. Two days after the bill passed, my child woke up and said, 'I want to make a sign about disabilities.' He asked for my help with spelling before writing the words 'People with disabilities are important' in pencil and then tracing over them with marker. He stood by our Disability Pride yard sign, and then, since the temperature was cooler out, he walked down our street and held it up for cars passing by. He said that when he grows up, he wants to be an 'activist' and 'protester.' I told him that he already is. [Editor's Note: HuffPost reached out for a response, and Ikea US issued the following statement: 'At IKEA, we strive to offer a safe and inclusive environment for children to play while in our stores. Our Småland policies are in place to keep children safe when they are in our space. Regarding this family's recent experience in our College Park, MD store, we are incredibly sensitive to feelings of exclusion, and so we have shared information with the family about our accommodations process, so that they may have a more positive experience at IKEA. We are constantly working to improve how we create an inclusive space while maintaining policies that keep all children safe.']
Chicago Tribune
11 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Got the sniffles? Here's what to know about summer colds and the COVID-19 variant called stratus
Summer heat, outdoor fun … and cold and flu symptoms? The three may not go together in many people's minds: partly owing to common myths about germs and partly because many viruses really do have lower activity levels in the summer. But it is possible to get the sniffles — or worse — in the summer. Federal data released Friday, for example, shows COVID-19 is trending up in most states, with emergency department visits up among people of all ages. Here's what to know about summer viruses. The number of people seeking medical care for three key illnesses — COVID-19, flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV — is currently very low, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Flu is trending down and RSV has been steady. But COVID-19 is trending up in most U.S. states. Wastewater data from around the country estimates 'moderate' COVID-19 activity. CDC wastewater also shows the XFG variant — nicknamed stratus — is most common in the U.S. Stratus can cause a 'razor blade' sore throat and is considered a 'variant under monitoring' by the World Health Organization. The WHO said the variant is only marginally better at evading people's immune systems and vaccines still work against it. The expectation is that COVID-19 will eventually settle into a winter seasonal pattern like other coronaviruses, but the past few years have brought a late summer surge, said Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at University of California Davis Children's Hospital. Other viruses circulating this time of year include the one that causes 'hand, foot and mouth' disease — which has symptoms similar to a cold, plus sores and rashes — and norovirus, sometimes called the stomach flu. Many viruses circulate seasonally, picking up as the weather cools in the fall and winter. So it's true that fewer people get stuffy noses and coughs in the summer — but cold weather itself does not cause colds. It's not just about seasonality. The other factor is our behavior, experts say. Nice weather means people are opening windows and gathering outside where it's harder for germs to spread. But respiratory viruses are still around. When the weather gets too hot and everyone heads inside for the air conditioning, doctors say they start seeing more sickness. In places where it gets really hot for a long time, summer can be cold season in its own right. 'I grew up on the East Coast and everybody gets sick in the winter,' said Dr. Frank LoVecchio, an emergency room doctor and Arizona State University researcher. 'A lot of people get sick in the summer here. Why is that? Because you spend more time indoors.' For people who are otherwise healthy, timing is a key consideration to getting any vaccine. You want to get it a few weeks before that big trip or wedding, if that's the reason for getting boosted, doctors say. But, for most people, it may be worth waiting until the fall in anticipation of winter cases of COVID-19 really tick up. 'You want to be fully protected at the time that it's most important for you,' said Dr. Costi Sifri, of the University of Virginia Health System. People at higher risk of complications should always talk with their doctor about what is best for them, Sifri added. Older adults and those with weak immune systems may need more boosters than others, he said. Last month, the CDC noted emergency room visits among children younger than 4 were rising. That makes sense, Blumberg said, because many young kids are getting it for the first time or are unvaccinated. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in May that the shots would no longer be recommended for healthy kids, a decision that health experts have said lacks scientific basis. The American Academy of Pediatrics still endorses COVID-19 shots for children older than 6 months. The same things that help prevent colds, flu and COVID any other time of the year work in the summer, doctors say. Spend time outside when you can, wash your hands, wear a mask. And if you're sick, stay home.
CNN
14 hours ago
- CNN
Draft ‘Make America Healthy Again' report treads lightly on pesticides, processed foods
Agriculture Food & health Donald TrumpFacebookTweetLink Follow The Trump administration's strategy to 'Make America Healthy Again' will bypass aggressive action on farm-used pesticides or regulatory crackdowns on ultraprocessed foods, according to a draft document obtained by CNN. The MAHA Commission, led by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is set to release in the coming weeks its finalized recommendations for addressing chronic diseases among American children. It is the second installment from the MAHA Commission, which in May issued a report laying out the main culprits it saw driving the chronic illnesses. 'President Trump pledged to Make America Healthy Again, and the Administration is committed to delivering on that pledge with Gold Standard Science. Until officially released by the White House and MAHA Commission, however, any documents purporting to be the second MAHA Report should be disregarded as speculative literature,' White House Spokesman Kush Desai said. A former federal official familiar with the document noted those briefed by the White House on the report have said the policies in the draft document appear to line up with what they were told. Kennedy has publicly railed against ultraprocessed foods, overprescription of medicine and Americans' exposure to commonly used pesticides in commercial farming. Yet the draft MAHA document, dated August 6, stops short of recommending some of the MAHA movement's key priorities — like targeting specific pesticides such as glyphosate — rankling many of Kennedy's longtime supporters. The draft report says the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency will prioritize research and precision technology that helps farmers reduce pesticide use. It also says the EPA 'will work to ensure that the public has awareness and confidence in EPA's robust pesticide review procedures.' Hundreds of MAHA advocates signed onto a letter late last week that pressed President Donald Trump to rebuke a congressional proposal that would shield pesticide and 'forever' chemical manufacturers from lawsuits linked to their products. The signees — which include former Kennedy campaign supporters, MAHA influencers and the nonprofit he chaired, Children's Health Defense — argue that there is significant evidence that these chemicals are linked to cancers, liver disease and other complications. That letter has since swelled to 350 signees, according to its organizers, who believe their efforts can pressure the administration to change the report before its public release. 'No one's trying to take away farmers' rights to grow food in a responsible manner. All we're asking is that companies whose products cause harm should be held liable in a court of law,' said David Murphy, former Kennedy finance director and the founder of United We Eat, a coalition of farmers and healthy food advocates. 'That seemed like a reasonable request to us,' Murphy said in an interview prior to the draft MAHA documents' circulation. Commercial farming groups have argued against further pesticide regulations, and blasted the first MAHA report's suggestion of links between chemicals such as glyphosate and atrazine and chronic health problems. Those farm groups' blowback prompted public assurances from Kennedy and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that the administration prioritizes farmers and Americans' confidence in the food supply. The administration will launch awareness campaigns around the benefits of whole foods, but is not unveiling any regulatory crackdown on ultraprocessed snacks that were key targets of the initial MAHA report. The draft document nods to new dietary guidelines, expected later this year, and an 'education campaign' alongside their release. The draft also cites a recent effort from the health and agricultural departments to define ultraprocessed foods, a first step in regulating their ingredients and marketing. While the draft also suggests that the FDA will take an aggressive approach to authorizing new additives in ultraprocessed foods, it stops short of recommending any crackdown on current products. Earlier this month, former FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler proposed a much bolder approach to declare that widely used ingredients in processed foods, like refined sugars and flours, are no longer considered safe.
