Public health officials agree on priority actions to control MERS-CoV

Public health officials meeting in Cairo agreed that strengthening countries' abilities to control, detect, and treat cases of new coronavirus infection are needed to stem the growing outbreak of the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Saturday. More than 100 public health experts from all countries in the Middle East and North Africa and Europe which have confirmed cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and from throughout WHO's Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) met from Thursday to Saturday. They agreed that there is a list of priority actions which need to be agreed internationally and implemented nationally, according to the WHO. At an international level, fast and complete reporting of cases, with contact histories, clinical care and treatment outcomes in as much detail as possible, and collected in a uniform manner across countries, is necessary, they said. The meeting agreed that a series of actions in seven key areas were key to increasing member states' and the international community's ability to prepare for, control, detect, alert the world to, and treat cases of diseases caused by MERS-CoV. These areas are surveillance, mass gatherings preparation, clinical management of cases, laboratory diagnostics, infection control, communications, and International Health Regulation (2005) reporting, the WHO said. WHO said Saturday in its latest disease outbreak update that the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia has announced an additional four laboratory-confirmed cases with MERS-CoV, including three female health care workers who cared for two previously confirmed MERS-CoV cases. Globally, from September 2012 to date, WHO has been informed of 68 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection with MERS-CoV, including 38 deaths, it said.