The World Health Organization has convened emergency talks on the enigmatic, deadly MERS virus, according to news reports from Geneva.
According to AFP, WHO health security chief Keiji Fukuda said the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) meeting would take place on Tuesday in the form of a telephone conference of officials from affected countries and global experts.
The meeting could decide whether to label MERS an international health emergency, he said.
So far 43 MERS patients have died — 54 percent, compared to nine percent of the 8,273 recorded case of SARS, which erupted in Asia in 2003. “We are not seeing it sweep through communities,” Fukuda told AFP.
“There are no big explosions going on right now. But because we have gaps in the information, it makes it very hard to peer into the future.”
Both Saudi Arabia and the WHO note that lower-scale, year-round Umrah pilgrimages have not spread MERS. “I think we’re always worried in a globalized world that infection can travel from one country to another,” said Fukuda.
“But if you disrupt travel, you slow travel, you also create another set of stresses, concerns and problems. So in looking at this situation, we try to balance both of those things.”
Fukuda said there was currently no emergency or pandemic but the experts would advise on how to tackle the disease if the number of cases suddenly grows.
Fukuda said MERS remained a patchwork of infections that had not yet swept through countries or communities as influenza can.
Arab News
