Iran confirms first two cases of Mers coronavirus

There is no vaccine or specific treatment for Mers, which has killed more than 175 people in Saudi Arabia and also reached as far as Malaysia, Greece, Lebanon and the US.

By Reuters

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Published: Tue 27 May 2014, 5:33 PM

Last updated: Sat 4 Apr 2015, 5:33 AM

Iranian officials say they have confirmed the country’s first two cases of Mers, a deadly virus first reported two years ago in Saudi Arabia.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (Mers) causes coughing, fever and sometimes fatal pneumonia, killing an estimated 30 per cent of those who are infected.

There is no vaccine or specific treatment for Mers, which has killed more than 175 people in Saudi Arabia and also reached as far as Malaysia, Greece, Lebanon and the US.

“Four suspected cases of new coronavirus infection were observed in a family in the province of Kerman. Two of these cases were confirmed in two sisters,” said Mohammad Mahdi Gouya, the director-general of communicable diseases at the Iranian Health Ministry’s Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention.

“One of the sisters is in critical condition and the other is currently receiving treatment under special circumstances,” the ministry’s website quoted him on Monday as saying.

Mers is a virus from the same family as SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed about 800 people worldwide after it first appeared in China in 2002.


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