Biography
Biography: Ilham QATTAN
Abstract
Recent outbreak of MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) in the Saudi Arabia started off as a simple case, when a patient who was experiencing respiratory complications was brought into a private Hospital in Jeddah and his condition was getting worse without any explanation, the doctors took a sample of the sputum and diagnosed the disease as one he had identified many times before. This case was different however (Assiri et al., 2013). The normal tests carried out did not give a positive for any of the known viruses as they should have had. The Novel coronavirus or as it has now been renamed to as MERS-CoV has been prevalent in much of the Middle East and Europe with the primary sites including the countries of Qatar, Jordan, the UAR and Saudi Arabia (Agnihothram et al., 2014). Secondary virus exposure has also been seen in UK, France, Italy, Tunisia and Germany and has been caused by some sort of human to human interaction. MERS is closely linked to bat coronaviruses seen in China (BtCoV-HKU4 and BtCoV-HKU5) and is related to it phylogenetically. The natural reservoir of the virus has not yet been identified, however, seeing how it is so closely related to bats, it can be seen as that could have emerged from bats and from their environment. It is thought that there has been some form of transmutation to the humans through domesticated pets and livestock; however, it still has to be proven by hard evidence (Reusken et al., 2013).