Tuesday, May 07, 2013
(FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 5/7/13)
By Ellen Knickmeyer in Hofuf, Saudi Arabia, and Betsy McKay in Atlanta
Saudi Arabia's announcements in the past five days of seven new deaths from a SARS-like virus have heightened fears that the Mideast outbreak is entering a more-aggressive phase.
On Monday, security guards, their faces covered by green medical masks, stood watch outside the intensive-care unit at a small hospital in Hofuf, in the country's Eastern province, that is treating some of the victims in the most lethal surge yet of the year-old outbreak of a novel coronavirus.
The kingdom's Ministry of Health disclosed the latest two deaths, of a 62-year-old woman and 71-year-old man, late Sunday night, saying in a brief statement that all of the current new cases of the virus appear to be clustered at a single hospital in Hofuf, one of the main cities of Eastern province, the heart of the Saudi oil industry.
The terse announcement by Saudi health officials triggered renewed international complaints that the kingdom has been slow in reporting details of the outbreak, sought by international organizations and countries trying to assess and prevent the spread of the virus.
International public-health officials say they are as concerned about the coronavirus as they are about the new H7N9 avian flu virus that recently began sickening people in eastern China. The flu has hit more people -- 128 are known to have been infected as of May 2, including 26 who died -- than the coronavirus.
But the coronavirus so far appears deadlier, with 30 cases including 18 deaths. And it may now be spreading from one person to another, international health officials say -- unlike H7N9, which isn't spreading widely between people.
No one knows where each virus came from, or how deadly each really is. In both cases, they may be infecting hundreds of people who have no symptoms. Yet each has the potential to spark a pandemic, public-health experts fear.
Comparing the two diseases, which are from different virus families, is difficult, said World Health Organization spokesman Gregory Hartl. Mr. Hartl said the Saudi government is reporting laboratory-confirmed cases of the coronavirus to the WHO, in compliance with international health regulations.
The deaths reported by the kingdom since Wednesday bring the number of confirmed deaths from the novel coronavirus, which typically causes acute respiratory distress, to 18, and overall cases to 30, including 23 in Saudi Arabia. The other confirmed cases occurred in Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Britain.
The virus has spread quickly: 13 people fell ill with what was later confirmed as coronavirus from April 14 to May 1. The reported death toll gives the Middle East-based disease a case fatality rate of about 60%, similar to that of the H5N1 avian flu.
The 13 cases, many linked to one Saudi hospital, suggest that the spread of this coronavirus may have reached a dangerous new stage in which it is spreading from one human to another, rather than infecting humans from another source such as an infected animal, according to infectious-disease experts.
At the health ministry in Riyadh, staffers said no medical official was available Monday to answer questions about the outbreak.
In an earlier interview, Deputy Health Minister Ziad Memish said Saudi health officials were testing widely for the virus and reporting each case to WHO as it was confirmed. Saudi Arabia has invited an international team of experts, expected to arrive this week, officials said.
In Hofuf on Monday, the guards outside the intensive-care unit at the private Al Moosa General Hospital were among the few signs of a medical crisis.
Malek al Moosa, the hospital's executive director, confirmed that many of the coronavirus patients were treated here. Mr. Moosa denied that his hospital was the center of the outbreak, and denied that it was the only hospital treating patients stricken with the virus.
"We have maybe paid the price of being transparent," by testing patients for the virus and reporting the results to medical authorities, Mr. Moosa said.
Saudi Arabia's news media have largely played down the outbreak, repeating government assertions that it was under control.
"They may have much more information but it surely hasn't been forthcoming," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, of the Saudi government. "The Saudis need to lay this out as completely as possible. We've all been concerned about the lack of transparency with regard to the Saudi investigation. It's not just about an endemic problem within the country. It represents a global threat."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
07-05-13 0345GMT
