18 New MERS Cases In Saudi Arabia
Recombinomics Commentary 14:00
May 3, 2014

In Jeddah:
56 year old man, suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure. He displayed respiratory symptoms on 21/4/2014. He was admitted to a government hospital on 24/4/2014. Now, his condition is stable.
70 year old man, suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure. He displayed respiratory symptoms on 30/4/2014 and was admitted to a government hospital. Now, his condition is stable.
55 year old man, suffering from diabetes. He displayed respiratory symptoms on 23/4/2014. He was admitted to a private hospital. Now, his condition is stable.
37 year old man. He has been in contact with a confirmed case and has not developed any symptoms.
55 year old woman. She displayed respiratory symptoms on 29/4/2014, she was admitted to National Guard hospital. Now, her condition is stable.
25 year old man. He displayed respiratory symptoms on 24/4/2014. He was admitted to a government hospital on 27/4/2014. He passed away on 30/4/2014.
53 year old man. He has been in contact with a confirmed case and has not developed any symptoms.

The above list of 7 Jeddah MERS cases are from the May 2 update from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (see map above).  The report had 11 other newly reported cases (5 Riyadh, 4 Mecca, 2 Medina), as well as the death of two prior cases.  The 18 cases in one day is the highest reported to date, and the above list of the Jeddah cases indicates most developed symptoms outside of a hospital setting and were subsequently confirmed after seeking medical treatment.

The 7 Jeddah cases extends the explosion of cases, and the development of symptoms unlinked to hospital exposure is at odds with comments that the Jeddah cases are due to infection control issues at hospitals.

These comments were made in association with a report on 28 sequences from samples collected from Jeddah cases in April.  Three sequences were made public (C7149 and C7770 from hospital A on April 3 and 7, respectively as well as C7569 from hospital B on April 5) and the virtual identity signaled clonal expansion via human to human transmission.  The comments on infection control strongly suggested that the other 25 sequences matched the three made public, indicating the explosion of cases was due to a novel coronavirus sub-clade ,as was seen for SARS in 2003.

In addition to the explosion of MERS cases in Jeddah, there were reports of six Jeddah exports to Jordan twice, Malaysia, Greece, UAE, and Egypt.  These Jeddah exports were followed by an export to Munster, Indiana by a health care worker who is reported to be from Riyadh.

The continuing increases of cases in Jeddah and spread to Mecca and Medina increases concerns that pilgrims traveling to KSA for Umrah, will extend the exports, as was seen in Malaysia as was as confirmation of MERS in a pilgrim from Turkey.

The sequences from the 25 additional cases in Jeddah, as well as recent exports, should be released immediately.

Media Link

Recombinomics Presentations

Recombinomics Publications

Recombinomics Paper at Nature Precedings