The coronavirus outbreak in eastern Saudi Arabia has gotten bigger.
The country's deputy health minister says an additional three infections have been confirmed, bringing the cluster to 13 cases.
Of those cases, seven have died.
Dr.
Ziad Memish confirmed the three additional cases in an email to The
Canadian Press and says the cases are linked through a connection to
health care, but does not elaborate on what that link is.
Experts
have been on the lookout for infections spreading in hospitals because
health-care facilities played a key role in the SARS outbreak.
This new coronavirus is a member of the same virus family as SARS and causes a similarly severe disease.
The
start of this outbreak was first reported to the World Health
Organization late last Wednesday. At that time, there were seven cases,
five of whom had already died.
On Friday, Saudi authorities
informed the WHO that three more cases had been confirmed. One was a
family member of one of the original seven.
Cases within a family
or household, or among people who share a workplace or some other common
gathering point would raise alarm bells as it this type of infection
pattern could be a signal that the virus is acquiring the ability to
spread from person-to-person.
There have been reports that this
cluster of cases, in a city called al-Ahsa, are all linked in some way
to a hospital there. A report Memish submitted on Friday to the
Internet-based disease alert system, ProMED-Mail, suggested all the
patients had underlying illnesses.
In fact, the first seven cases
were all listed as having "multiple comorbidities.'' A comorbidity is
medical-speak for a disease or condition.
The new cases bring the global confirmed count to 30 cases. Of those, 18 people have died.
The
first known cases of the new infection occurred in April 2012, in a
cluster of 11 illnesses in a hospital in Jordan. At the time, a reason
for the outbreak wasn't found.
But months later stored samples
from two of those cases were tested and found to be positive for the new
virus. The other nine people are suspected to have been infected, but
it's not clear at this point if they will ever be confirmed.
The
coronavirus was first spotted when a Saudi man died of a mysterious and
severe pneumonia last June. When the cause of his illness could not be
detected, an infectious diseases specialist sent a sample to Erasmus
Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where virologists
determined a new coronavirus was behind the infection.
To date,
Saudi Arabia has recorded the highest number of cases. Qatar, the United
Arab Emirates and Britain have also had cases. Britain has seen the
first confirmed cases of limited person-to-person spread, in a family
where three members fell ill and two died. It is believed, though, that
the first case in that cluster contracted the virus while travelling in
Saudi Arabia.
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