Saudi fears rise over mystery virus
 

A mystery virus known as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers) has claimed an increasing number of lives in Saudi Arabia where it has spread to at least five cities. There is no known cure and fear of the condition is growing, as the BBC's Gulf correspondent Mark Lobel reports from Dubai.

All joking aside, how do you suppose it spread from camels to humans? And no known cure? Is there a possibility that this virus could proliferate into an epidemic in the entire Gulf region?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27337627

One can only hope.....save us lots of rounds.

Synthetic DNA Vaccine Against MERS Induces Immunity in Animal Study, Penn Researchers
 

This is a quick break through, I wonder if the Ebola Vaccine work influenced the work on the MERS Virus.

http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/news/News_...15/08/weiner2/

What's the matter, the Saudi's would not employ the pig vaccine? :munchin

:D

LOL

Hmmmm.....IIRC I said MERS-CoV was the single greatest threat to a pandemic or intentional release(s) last year (see Pandemic Flu thread). :p

The problem is going to be if this occurs during the normal flu season it will be too difficult to differentiate, will overwhelm the health-care system, and a vaccination strategy will be too late. Oh well....:munchin

As was said, we can only hope.......:munchin

I don't know of any study that has looked at genetic diversity of host response to MERS-CoV or any other virus for that matter. But considering the mechanism of pathogenesis and host response to infection, I would expect far more serious issues to present in a genetically homogeneous population to manifest before variance in responses to MERS-CoV would arise.

Hajj
 

IIRC - Hajj is 20-25 Sept (our calendar), this year.

That could make for good contagion conditions with hundreds of thousands of sweaty, non-hand washing individuals bomb bursting across the region at endex.....

Nah....

Interesting to look back and compare it to our current bat soup croup situation.