Newly discovered virus takes more lives spreads

Newly discovered virus takes more lives spreads

A new SARS-like virus recently found in humans continues to spread -- with the worldwide total now at 49, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. Of the 49 known infections with the MERS-CoV virus, 27 have resulted in death, the organization said. The latest deaths were reported in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi health ministry said Wednesday that three people died from their infections in the country's eastern region. Health workers infected with coronavirus How is dangerous new virus spreading? WHO tracks new virus to Middle East The virus is "a threat to the entire world," the WHO's general director said Monday. 5 things to know about the coronavirus It "is not a problem that any single affected country can keep to itself or manage all by itself," Margaret Chan said Monday in her closing remarks at the 66th World Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. Although many of the cases have occurred on the Arabian Peninsula, people have died of the infection elsewhere. However, "all of the European cases have had a direct or indirect connection to the Middle East," the WHO said earlier this month. But "in France and the United Kingdom, there has been limited local transmission among close contacts who had not been to the Middle East but had been in contact with a traveler recently returned from the Middle East." On Tuesday, a patient died in France after having contracted the virus during a trip to the Middle East, the WHO reported. Coronaviruses cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, as well as a variety of animal diseases. However, the new virus is not SARS. The WHO recently gave it a more specific name: Middle East respiratory symptom coronavirus, or MERS-CoV. It acts like a cold virus and attacks the respiratory system, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said. But symptoms, which include fever and a cough, are severe and can lead to pneumonia and kidney failure. Health officials do not yet know much about how the virus spreads, which makes it hard for scientists to prevent infections, Chan said. The WHO is calling for the world to pull together its resources to study and tackle the virus. New virus is a 'threat to the entire world'

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Experts triple estimate of world dengue fever infections

Experts triple estimate of world dengue fever infections

Around 390 million people are infected each year with dengue fever - the world's fastest-spreading tropical disease - more than triple the current estimate by the World Health Organization, experts said on Sunday. The new finding, based on several years of analysis, underscores the growing burden of the mosquito-borne viral disease, which is also called "breakbone fever" because of the severe pain it can cause. There is as yet no approved vaccine or specific drug to treat dengue, which is not normally fatal but lands many victims in hospital. Researchers from the University of Oxford and the Wellcome Trust presented their results, along with a detailed map of dengue distribution, in the journal Nature. Their new figure includes 96 million severe cases and approximately 300 million mild or asymptomatic episodes. That compares with the WHO's most recent estimate for overall infections of 50-100 million a year, The high number of relatively mild cases offers little cause for comfort, since it suggests the reservoir of disease is far larger than expected. What is more, dengue is a disease that hits more than once and people who get it mildly first time are more likely to have a serious episode if bitten again by an infected mosquito. "The asymptomatic patients, in terms of the future burden of disease, are a very important contributor," said Jeremy Farrar, director of Oxford University's tropical disease research unit in Vietnam. Spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, dengue has grown rapidly along with urbanization and globalization because it thrives in tropical mega-cities and is easily spread in goods containing small puddles of water, such as used tires. Climate change is also making more parts of the planet habitable for the dengue-spreading mosquito. As a result, half the world's population is now exposed to the disease, mostly in the developing world - but also in parts of southern Europe and the southern United States. MADEIRA OUTBREAK Last year Europe experienced its first sustained transmission of dengue fever since the 1920s with around 2,000 people infected in the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira. Farrar said more such outbreaks were likely in future, since the mosquito was already present in southern Europe and there were increasing numbers of people travelling to and from dengue-infected areas. The researchers estimated that 70 percent of the world's serious dengue cases were in Asia, with India alone accounting for 34 percent of the total. The Americas - mainly Brazil and Mexico - made up 14 percent, while Africa's dengue burden was nearly as large. The prevalence of the disease in Africa is worrying, since dengue has not generally been seen as a major problem on the continent. The research team said the impact of disease in Africa was being masked by symptomatically similar illnesses, such as malaria. Hopes for an effective dengue vaccine suffered a setback last year when an experimental shot from Sanofi proved far less effective than hoped in a mid-stage clinical trial in Thailand. Further large trials of the Sanofi vaccine - the most advanced in development - are still continuing and scientists have not given up hope that it may yet have a role of play.

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