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| Filipino Paramedic Dies of MERS in UAE, Bird Flu Kills Nearly 100 in China in 2014 | ||
| 2014-04-13 | ||
| [AnNahar] The United Arab Emirates announced Friday that one of six Filipino paramedics in the UAE who have been infected by the MERS coronavirus has died from the respiratory disease. The announcement comes just days after a 24-hour shutdown of the emergency department at a major hospital in Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... , where most cases have been reported, amid fears of a spread of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome among medical staff. The UAE interior ministry said the six staff members worked at the Al-Ain Rescue and Ambulance Section in Abu Dhabi. The ministry "has taken all necessary preventive health measures by placing the patients under quarantine," it said in a statement without specifying when the paramedic died. It also urged people who have been transferred lately to hospitals to check on their condition, as a precautionary move. Health authorities in Saudi Arabia had said that three MERS patients in Jeddah were health workers, including one of two who died in the western city in recent weeks, prompting authorities to close the emergency department at the city's King Fahd Hospital for 24 hours late on Monday. Saudi Arabia has recorded 182 MERS infections, of whom 67 have died since the virus first appeared in the kingdom in September 2012. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday that it had been told of 212 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS infection worldwide, of which 88 have proved fatal. The first MERS infection in the UAE was announced in July last year, while its first death from the SARS-like virus was announced in December. Friday's statement did not provide figures on the total number of MERS deaths or infections in the UAE. But the WHO this month said it was notified of the March 30 death of an 64-year-old Emirati man with underlying medical conditions. The man "did not have contact with a previously laboratory-confirmed case, but has had exposure to animals" and had visited a camel farm in Saudi Arabia on March 10. The MERS virus is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died. Experts are still struggling to understand MERS, for which there is no known vaccine. A study has said the virus has been "extraordinarily common" in camels for at least 20 years, and may have been passed directly from the animals to humans.
Almost 100 people in China died from the H7N9 bird flu strain in the first three months of the year, but the number of both fatalities and infections declined in March, government figures showed. A total of 24 people died from the disease in March, the National Health and Family Planning Commission said in monthly figures for infectious disease, down from 41 in February and 31 in January. The total number of deaths for the period is 96. The number of new infections reported in March fell sharply to 24 from 99 in February and 127 in January, the data showed earlier this week, giving a total of 250 cases. Last year China recorded 46 deaths and 144 cases in the H7N9 outbreak, which started early in 2013 and returned in the autumn. The virus ignited fears that it could possibly mutate to become easily transmissible between people, which might threaten to trigger a global pandemic. But Chinese officials and the World Health Organization say there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission, despite sporadic cases of apparent infection between family relatives. Experts have pointed to a seasonal rise in cases so far this year, thought to be linked to cold weather. China has responded to the current outbreak by clamping down on live poultry markets and stepping up monitoring of people with symptoms associated with the virus. | ||
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #1 I get tense every time I hear a Mockingbird cough. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2014-04-13 11:49 |