* MERS coronavirus has potential to spread globally, WHO
says
* U.N. health agency issues new guidance on pandemic risks
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA, June 10 (Reuters) – The World Health Organisation on
Monday urged health workers around the world to be on the alert
for symptoms of the deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome
coronavirus (MERS), which has the potential to circle the globe
and cause a pandemic.
The United Nations agency, which issued new, long-awaited
guidance to countries on influenza pandemics, said the world was
also in the same “alert phase” for two human strains of bird flu
– H5N1, which emerged a decade ago, and H7N9, first detected in
China in March.
“We are trying to find out as much as we can and we are
concerned about these (three) viruses,” Andrew Harper, WHO
special adviser for health security and environment, told a news
briefing on its new scale for pandemic risk.
The interim guidance, to be finalised later this year,
incorporates lessons from the 2009/2010 pandemic of H1N1 swine
flu, which caused an estimated 200,000 deaths, roughly in line
with annual seasonal flu.
Having been adjusted to include the notion of severity when
assessing risk, the new scale has just four phases against six
previously and is intended to give countries more flexibility in
judging local risks.
“International concern about these infections is high,
because it is possible for this virus to move around the world.
There have been now several examples where the virus has moved
from one country to another through travellers,” the WHO said of
MERS, which causes coughing, fever and pneumonia.
Travellers have carried the virus to Britain, France,
Germany and Italy. Infected people have also been found in
Jordan, Qatar, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.
“Consequently, all countries in the world need to ensure
that their healthcare workers are aware of the virus and the
disease it can cause and that, when unexplained cases of
pneumonia are identified, MERS-CoV should be considered.”
MERS-coronavirus, a distant relative of SARS that emerged in
Saudi Arabia last year, has been confirmed in 55 people
worldwide, killing 31 of them. Forty cases occurred in Saudi
Arabia, many in a hospital in the eastern province of al-Ahsa.
“The overall number of cases is limited but the virus causes
death in about 60 percent of patients,” the WHO said, reporting
on a week-long mission of international experts to Saudi Arabia
that ended on Sunday.
“So far, about 75 percent of the cases in the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia have been in men and most have occurred in people
with one or more major chronic conditions.”
But the source of the MERS virus remained unknown, it said.
Clusters of cases have occurred in families and health
facilities, indicating a limited capacity to spread among people
in close contact with an infected person, it said.
All countries in the Middle East should urgently intensify
disease surveillance to detect any MERS infections, it said.
The WHO has not yet drawn up advice for travellers ahead of
the annual haj pilgrimage in October, which draws millions of
Muslims to Saudi Arabia.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Mike Collett-White)
