Assuit hospitals on alert over MERS

Assiut health officials said they have taken all preventive measures to face MERS or the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome virus. Ahmed Abdel-Hameed, undersecretary at the Ministry of Health in Assiut, said all required measures were taken at all hospitals in the Upper Egyptian and health workers have been trained on dealing with MERS patients. He said this step comes as part of the ministry's endeavors to follow up the health status of any suspected carriers of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus (MERS-COV). MERS, which appeared in the Saudi kingdom in 2012, is considered a deadlier -- albeit less transmissible -- cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003, killing nine percent of the 8,273 people it had infected