Coronavirus claims 2 more lives

Jeddah — A 72-year-old Saudi male died of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in Taif and a 64-year-old Saudi woman succumbed to the virus in Buriadah in the last 72 hours in the Kingdom, according to the Ministry of Health. This takes the death toll from coronavirus to 628 since the disease was first reported in the Kingdom two years ago. Some 870 people have so far recovered from the disease. However, no new cases have been reported in the last 24 hours. The World Health Organization (WHO) issued an updated risk assessment for the virus, its first since July 2015, noting that experts are still deeply concerned about continuing healthcare spread, though the outbreaks are smaller and stopped relatively quickly. The WHO said since its last MERS-CoV risk assessment in July 2015 that only one new country — Bahrain — has reported a case. Over the 17-month time period, 473 new illnesses were reported to the WHO, most of them from Saudi Arabia. These recent cases have largely been associated with transmission in healthcare settings, and camel exposure. Overall, the epidemiology and transmission patterns haven›t changed, with repeated spillovers from camels to people, with men older than 60 with underlying health conditions at the greatest risk for illnesses and severe disease. Experts noted improvements in the investigation of community-acquired cases, which has included testing camel herds near where human infections were found. Since the last risk assessment, hospital-related outbreaks have become more frequent, but are generally smaller in size and sometimes involve several hospitals, according to the report. Healthcare-related outbreaks been reported in several Saudi Arabian cities, including Riyadh and Madinah, which seem to have been stopped quickly with the implementation of infection prevention and control steps. The group noted that one such recent outbreak occurred in Riyadh in June, in which most cases were asymptomatic and identified through rapid contact tracing of healthcare and household contacts.