The World Health Organization announced Saturday that MERS virus has led to 144 infected cases and 54 deaths, but after Saudi Arabia declared eight additional MERS virus cases with three being fatal, the global count is at 122 infected cases and 57 deaths as of late, The Star reported Sunday.
Channel News reported that MERS virus - the Middle-Eastern coronavirus and dubbed as SARS virus 'cousin' - has led to three more deaths and five infected cases as confirmed by Saudi Arabia's health ministry.
The new fatal victims were reported to be: a 53-year-old Saudi national, a 74-year of Saudi man from Medina, who, based on reports, got infected after making contact from a patient, and a 56-year-old foreigner, who came to the country to visit the health sector.
On the other hand, the five new infected cases include: an 18-year-old male from Hafr al-Baten and a 3-year-old girl from northeast Saudi Arabia, prompting the authorities to confirm that the deadly virus can spread and affect everyone, no matter what age group or gender they are belong to.
According to Examiner, MERS virus commonly spreads via contact with an infected individual, and while Saudi Arabia is at the center of this wave of infections, there are also cases sporadically recorded worldwide. However, no known report could point out whether the international cases are in one way or the other still connected to Saudi Arabia's MERS virus patients.
The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome stated that there is still no possible vaccine to battle against MERS virus or a drug to control or possibly mitigate its life-threatening effects to its victims.
Meanwhile, a new research claimed that a drug combination using two existing antiviral medications can potentially help infected patients get rid of the new MERS coronavirus.
The new study claimed that the drug combination of ribavirin and interferon alpha 2b was found to be useful in reducing the severity of MERS virus infected macaque monkeys, adding that the group of monkeys provided with the drug-combo showed positive feedback to the treatment compared to the animal group that didn't receive the therapy.
Autopsy reports after the treatment showed that the tissues of treated macaque monkeys have lower levels of MERS virus and that less lung damage were seen in the post-treatment examination, which was performed at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases' Rocky mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont. Falzarano.
"Everything fit together towards suggesting that treatment definitely helps lead to a better outcome than the absence of treatment," Canadian Scientist and Lead Author of the Study Darryl Falzarano stated in the study published in the Journal Nature Medicine Sunday.
The scientific community explained that developing a drug from scratch would take years and might not be able to provide solution to the present-day MERS virus threat; thus, they decided to test old drugs, singly and in combination.
Ribavirin is an antiviral drug for hepatitis C infections while Interferon alpha 2b is a synthetic protein produced by the human immune system. Both drugs were said to be widely used during the SARS outbreak in 2003.
Although the macaque testing proved potential use of the drug combo in dealing with the MERS coronavirus, the Rocky Mountain Labs are still testing other drug options that can provide better treatment outcomes to the SARS cousin.
"At the moment, this is as good as it gets," Chief of Virology at the Rocky Mountain Labs and Senior Author of the study Dr. Heinz Feldman said.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's deputy minister of health has said via email that the new therapy is being used in treating some documented cases in their country.
"We have used this combination regimen on a group of patients but it's not routinely used in all patients," Dr. Ziad Memish said, adding that "the outcome has not been very positive."
MERS virus is sad to have spread from animals to humans. The SARS cousin causes severe flu-like symptoms, kidney failure, and potentially fatal respiratory problems.
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