World Health Organisation calls emergency meeting to respond to SARS-like outbreak
Amid fears of a new pandemic more deadly than Sars, 80 officials and doctors, including two from Britain, gathered in Cairo yesterday to examine ways of tackling Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, dubbed MERS. The coronavirus is casting a shadow over the annual Muslim pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia, where four new deaths were announced on Monday.

New MERS virus spreads easily, deadlier than SARS
A new virus responsible for an outbreak of respiratory illness in the Middle East may be more deadly than SARS, according to a team of infectious-disease specialists who recently investigated cases in Saudi Arabia. Of 23 confirmed cases in April, 15 people died — an “extremely high” fatality rate of 65 percent, according to Johns Hopkins senior epidemiologist…  

Thirty-three people are dead from MERS, a coronavirus that the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling a “threat to the entire world”. MERS, for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, is a newly discovered virus that causes severe respiratory infection.There have been 58 laboratory-confirmed cases world-wide since the virus was discovered last September. Saudi Arabia claims about half of all cases of MERS. Some 30 people have died. Alarm bells are not over what has been MERS has done, but for what it has the potential to do.

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