Sixty-two cases of the new coronavirus have been confirmed in Saudi Arabia since the disease emerged last year. 36 of those affected have died, says the Saudi ministry.
The threat of the new coronavirus still looms in Saudi Arabia as several million pilgrims are expected in a few days. Indeed, Umra, the small pilgrimage organized from Mecca during Ramadan begins on July 9. The Saudi Ministry of Health on Wednesday announced the deaths of two new people with MERS-CoV.
The authorities specify on their website that it was a 75-year-old man who died in Al-Ahsa, in Orientale province, the main region affected by the disease, and a 63-year-old woman who died in Riyadh. . In addition, the Saudi ministry assured that three patients, two in Orientale province and another in the capital, have recovered.
In the end, sixty-two cases of the MERS-CoV coronavirus have been confirmed in the Kingdom since the onset of the disease last year and 36 of those affected have died, the ministry said.
The World Health Organization still does not recommend any travel restrictions. The Saudi Embassy in the United States and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Cdc) advise “to postpone the pilgrimage for pregnant women, the elderly, the dying and children” . Indeed, such gatherings are not only conducive to the spread of the disease, but also to the mutation of the virus. A step that would promote human-to-human transmission. Either way, and even though it’s hard to predict the consequences to come, the countdown has begun.
The virus has already claimed forty victims (scientifically proven deaths) out of 77 infected patients. Besides Saudi Arabia where most infections are concentrated, isolated cases have also been observed in Britain, Italy, France and Tunisia. The MERS-CoV coronavirus belongs to the same family as the virus responsible for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed nearly 800 people worldwide in 2003.
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