Killer Mers coronavirus deadlier and spreads more easily than Sars

The mysterious new respiratory virus that originated in the Middle East spreads easily between people and appears more deadly than Sars, doctors say. RML / AP Photo

LONDON // The Mers-CoV virus spreads easily between people and appears more deadly than Sars, doctors said yesterday after investigating the biggest outbreak in Saudi Arabia.
More than 60 cases of Mers-CoV, including 38 deaths, have been recorded by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the past year, mostly in Saudi Arabia. So far, the illness has not spread as quickly as Sars did in 2003, ultimately triggering a global outbreak that killed about 800 people.
An international team of doctors who investigated nearly two dozen cases in eastern Saudi Arabia found Mers-CoV has some striking similarities to Sars.
Unlike Sars, though, scientists remain baffled as to the source of Mers-CoV.
In a worrying finding, the team said the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus not only spreads easily between people, but within hospitals. That was also the case with Sars, a distant relative of the new virus.
"To me, this felt a lot like Sars did," said Dr Trish Perl, a senior hospital epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, who was part of the team. Their report was published online yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr Perl said they could not nail down how it was spread in every case - through droplets from sneezing or coughing, or a more indirect route. Some of the hospital patients were not close to the infected person, but somehow picked up the virus.
"In the right circumstances, the spread could be explosive," said Dr Perl, while emphasising that the team only had a snapshot of one Mers-CoV cluster in Saudi Arabia.
Cases have continued to trickle in, and there appears to be an continuing outbreak in Saudi Arabia. Mers cases have also been reported in the UAE, Jordan, Qatar, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Tunisia. Most have had a direct connection to the Middle East region.
But Mers-CoV appears more lethal than Sars. Compared to Sars' 8 per cent death rate, the fatality rate for Mers-CoV in the Saudi outbreak was about 65 per cent, though the experts could be missing mild cases that might skew the figures.
WHO and Saudi officials have been working hard to contain the virus ahead of the Haj in October, when millions of pilgrims will visit Mecca.