CAIRO/RIYADH – Egypt has discovered its first case of the potentially deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in an Egyptian citizen who had recently returned from Saudi Arabia, Egypt's Ministry of Health said on Saturday. The virus, which can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia, has spread from the Gulf to Europe and has already caused over 90 deaths. The patient, 27, is being treated for pneumonia at a Cairo hospital and is in a stable condition, the ministry said in a statement. The man, who is from the Nile Delta, was living in Riyadh, the ministry said. Saudi Arabia, which has been hardest-hit by the MERS virus, announced on Friday it had discovered 14 more cases in the Kingdom, bringing the total number to 313. A Saudi Health Ministry statement said the new cases had been reported in Riyadh, Jeddah and Makkah in the past 24 hours. Authorities had also registered five more deaths due to the virus, it said. Two other deaths were recorded a day earlier as the Kingdom releases near-daily reports of a rising number of infections. The ministry says 92 people have died since September 2012. Saudi Arabia has witnessed a jump in the rate of infection in recent weeks, with many of the new cases recorded in Jeddah. A large proportion of the people infected are health care workers. “Approximately 75 percent of the recently reported cases ... have acquired the infection from another case through human-to-human transmission,” World Health Organization regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean Ala Alwan said in Cairo. “The majority of these secondary cases have been infected within the health care setting and are mainly health care workers, although several patients are also considered to have been infected with MERS-CoV while in hospital for other reasons.” It took more than two years to reach the first 100 cases of MERS, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “Now, in just the past two weeks, we've had 100 cases … There's a major change occurring that cannot just be attributed to better case detection,” he said. “When humans readily transmit to humans, that's what will cause a worldwide outbreak. We are very concerned that … with what we've seen over the past two weeks … we may be at that point now.” A spokesman for the World Health Organization in Geneva said on Friday it was “concerned” about the rising MERS numbers in Saudi Arabia. – Agencies
