MERS death toll in Saudi Arabia reaches 480

Education and constant surveillance is in place to protect everyone from the MERS corona virus. Blood samples from vaccinated camels showed that the vaccine produced potentially protective antibodies in them as well.

Drug-resistant head lice are very likely coming to a school near you, U.S. investigators warn.

Maria Van Kerkhove, PhD, an epidemiologist with the Pasteur Institute Center for Global Health in Paris, has been part of past joint missions to investigate MERS outbreaks in Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

Twenty cases in Riyadh were reported in the week of August 9 to 15, the statement said, without specifying the reason for the sudden increase in cases, especially in Riyadh. And this transmission was done with in-hospital transmission the most common route of infection.

MERS-CoV is responsible for pneumonia deep within people’s lungs.

Meanwhile, the new synthetic DNA vaccine completely protected rhesus macaques from the ailment when the vaccine was given to the monkeys six weeks prior to their exposure to MERS. “Accordingly the development of a vaccine for MERS remains a high priority”. However, so far there are no vaccines or drugs that target the virus, thought to be harbored by camels.

The MOH said the spread of the virus was relatively limited to one source and that the hospital’s ED is closed. And it can stop MRES to become an outbreak. It will focus on both people and health care workers as well he added. US business Inovio and Korean company GeneOne Life Science are scheduled to take the vaccine “into human safety and efficiency studies by the end of 2015”, he says.

Since the vaccine is not live, it poses no risk of spreading to people by accident, researchers said. Inovio’s collaborators for this study include researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Public Health Agency of Canada, NIH, University of Washington, and University of South Florida.