Saudi Arabia MERS death toll reaches 66
Iran Press TV
Mon Apr 7, 2014 2:58PM GMT
Saudi Arabia's health authorities say the deaths of two more men from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) have brought the death toll from the illness in the country to 66.
The Saudi Health Ministry said in a statement released on Sunday that a 70-year-old national, who died in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, had also been suffering from chronic illnesses.
The statement added that the second victim was a medic, also in Jeddah, where the ministry reported four new cases of the fatal illness.
Saudi Arabia has recorded 167 MERS cases since the virus first emerged in the country in 2012.
The virus was discovered in September 2012 in a Qatari man who had recently traveled to Saudi Arabia. Experts are still studying the disease, for which there is no known vaccine.
Similar cases have been also reported in Jordan, Qatar, Germany, France, Italy, Tunisia and the United Kingdom.
According to a study, the virus has been "extraordinarily common" in camels for at least two decades, and may have been passed directly from the animals to humans.
MERS-CoV is regarded a deadlier, but less transmissible cousin of the SARS virus which first broke out in Asia in 2003 and infected more than 8,000 people.
The World Health Organization announced at the end of March that it has been told of 206 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS infection, including 86 deaths.
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