MERS Virus Affects Three More in Saudi Arabia

One of the patients is a 67-year-old woman from Riyadh with underlying medical conditions, but who was not known to have come into contact with animals or another sufferer of the virus.

The other two patients diagnosed with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome were health care workers who had been exposed to other MERS patients.

According to the WHO, 46 of the 94 people confirmed to have been infected have died from MERS since September 2012.

Concerns about the virus have led Saudi Arabia to restrict visas for the hajj pilgrimage in October, during which millions of Muslims flock to the holy sites of Mecca and Medina.

Experts are struggling to understand MERS, which still lacks a vaccine and which has an extremely high fatality rate of more than 51 percent.

It is considered a cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died.

Like SARS, MERS is thought to have jumped from animals to humans, and shares the former's flu-like symptoms -- but differs by causing kidney failure.

Scientists studying the new virus have found older patients, men, and people with underlying medical conditions are those particularly at risk.

Source-AFP

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Friday-Saturday Weekend in Saudi Arabia

by Kathy Jones on? June 24, 2013 at 9:50 PM Lifestyle News The official SPA news agency reported on Sunday that Saudi Arabia is switching its weekend to Friday-Saturday to better serve its economy and "international commitments".
Saudi Arabia becomes the last of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council -- which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and United Arab Emirates -- to abandon the Thursday-Friday weekend to be closer to the world's Saturday-Sunday weekend.

The decision takes effect in ministries and government departments from next week, while it will be implemented by schools and universities from the start of the next academic year.

According to the decree the change was made to better serve "the Saudi economy and its international commitments" and coordinate with the working days in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the world.

It will "reduce the negative repercussions on economic and financial activity in the kingdom and make up for lost economic opportunities," said the decree.

Riyadh's stock exchange, the biggest in the Arab world, is open for five days a week, but until now only three of these coincided with the working week in the world's major financial centres.

Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil exporter and a member of the G20 group of the globe's biggest economies.

The move had been previously rejected by clergymen in the kingdom, which follows the ultra conservative Wahhabi school of Islam, on the grounds that Saturday is the religious weekend for Jews.

Oman became the fifth GCC member state to make the switch several years after the other four members.

Source-AFP

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Saudi Arabia to Send Animal Samples to US in SARS-like Virus Probe

The ministry has "collected large samples from bats and other animals, including camels, sheep and cats," said Saudi Deputy Health Minister Ziad Memish.

So far, there have been 44 lab-confirmed cases worldwide of the virus, which until now has been known as the novel coronavirus, or nCoV-EMC, but was this week redubbed the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS.

Saudi Arabia counts by far the most cases, with 30 confirmed infections and 17 fatalities, while cases have also been detected in Jordan, Qatar, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Britain and France.

Memish told diplomats gathered in Geneva for the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, that his country until now had not been able to send samples from animals besides bats to the United States.

"But now... we've got an approval to move these samples and they will be shipped for testing," he said.

The virus is a cousin of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which triggered a scare 10 years ago when it erupted in east Asia, leaping to humans from animal hosts and eventually killing some 800 people.

Scientists at the Erasmus medical centre in Rotterdam have determined that the virus appears to infect the body via a docking point in lung cells, suggesting bats may be a natural reservoir for it.

Bats were also pinpointed as a likely natural reservoir for SARS in a 2005 study, and are known carriers of the deadly haemorrhagic fever Ebola.

Source-AFP

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