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Middle-East coronavirus has a new name... |
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CStackDrPH
Valued Member Joined: April 21 2013 Status: Offline Points: 2308 |
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Posted: May 17 2013 at 8:52pm |
The novel coronavirus that has afflicted Saudi Arabia and other countries is now officially called MERS-CoV.
To provide uniformity and facilitate communication about the disease,
the Coronavirus Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy
of Viruses has decided to call the new virus Middle East respiratory
syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). |
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CRS, DrPH
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EdwinSm,
Moderator Joined: April 03 2013 Status: Offline Points: 24065 |
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Thanks - it is good to see that this is a WHO announcement so I presume that they will also adopt the name instead of the nCoV that they have been using.
Personally I would have liked a name with 'bat' in it such as "Bat-SARS". |
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CStackDrPH
Valued Member Joined: April 21 2013 Status: Offline Points: 2308 |
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Well said! Actually, from what I am reading, it might be "Camel SARS"! There are damn few mammals in that ecosystem to begin with, so your guess is as good as anyone's!
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CRS, DrPH
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NewCorona
V.I.P. Member Joined: May 18 2013 Status: Offline Points: 65 |
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Like the SARS virus, MRES-CoV is most silimilar to those found in Bats.: http://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/ncv/overview.html
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CStackDrPH
Valued Member Joined: April 21 2013 Status: Offline Points: 2308 |
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"No animal reservoir or mode of zoonotic transmission has yet been identified for MERS-CoV although the similarities to bat coronaviruses make bats a likely source, specifically insectivorous species such as Pipistrellus. However, experience with SARS indicates that the exposure may not be directly from bats but can result from environmental contamination or via intermediary animal hosts [9]." ....My money is on "intermediary animal hosts." Like the civet cat during the SARS outbreak, I think the MERS-CoV is in the ecosystem, and it seems unlikely to me that so many cases in the Middle East would have intimate contact with bats, although, like SARS, the MERS-CoV might spread by aerosol (bat guano). |
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CRS, DrPH
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Albert
Admin Joined: April 24 2006 Status: Offline Points: 47746 |
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Well, we added MERS to this forum name once again. We originally changed the name to MERS the same day the virus received its new name, but removed it a couple days later when it appeared that the WHO and health officials were not going to use that new name as they had still referred to it as coronavirus. So we will add it again now.
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Pixie
Admin Group Joined: June 05 2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 19668 |
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A ProMED-mail post
http://www.promedmail.org |
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Albert
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Should post this is latest news
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EdwinSm,
Moderator Joined: April 03 2013 Status: Offline Points: 24065 |
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