Potential Animal Reservoirs of the Novel Coronavirus MERS-CoV on the Arabian Peninsula
The first human infections of a novel coronavirus were identified in late of 2012. The coronavirus was later named hCoV-EMC based on genetic analysis at the Erasmus Medical Center [1]. More recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) has adopted the label MERS-CoV for hCoV-EMC [2]. As noted in a previous post, at least 50+ MERS cases have been reported from eight countries; France, Jordan, Italy, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. The nature of the transmission is uncertain, but some of these infections are occurring in hospital settings; several health care workers have been infected. Four of these clusters, one from France, one from Italy, one from Tunisia, and one from the United Kingdom, occurred outside of the Middle East region. The index cases in all four of these clusters had previously visited countries within the Arabian Peninsula. The index cases of other clusters, as well as other individual isolated ...