LONDON â€" International health officials have called on medical staff around the world to be on the alert for the spread of a deadly SARS-related virus that was first identified in the Middle East last year.
More than half the 55 people infected with the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, have died in an outbreak that has been mainly confined to Saudi Arabia but with cases documented as far away as Britain and France.
As experts warned of a potential repeat of the SARS outbreak that caused almost 800 deaths worldwide a decade ago, the World Health Organization said all countries needed to ensure health workers were aware of the respiratory virus when dealing with unexplained cases of pneumonia.
Despite the warnings, officials will be eager to avoid what has been described as a media-driven hysteria that accompanied the spread of SARS after it struck South China and Hong Kong in 2002-’03.
The W.H.O. statement followed a visit that officials of the United Nations’ body made last week to Saudi Arabia, which is to host around one million visitors at the height of the year-round Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca next month.
The Saudi health ministry has said that foreign pilgrims with flu-like symptoms will have to undergo tests for the coronavirus when they arrive in the Kingdom.
The Financial Times quoted Salman Rawaf, a public health professor at London’s Imperial College, as saying of the potential threat to pilgrims, “The risk is there. The advice from the World Health Organization is really: wear a mask.â€
Foreign governments have not so far issued travel warnings to their citizens. However, the U.S. State Department has urged American Muslims planning to make the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in October to keep up with developments via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The C.D.C. currently advises American travelers to countries in or near the Arabian Peninsula to monitor their health and see a doctor right away if they develop fever and symptoms of lower respiratory illness, such as cough or shortness of breath.
The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia’s neighboring state of Bahrain, which has so far reported no cases of the virus, is meanwhile reported to have told Americans there to take common sense precautions against the virus, such as regular hand-washing and avoiding contact with anyone who appears to be sick.
The positive news from the W.H.O. was that there was no evidence of widespread person-to-person transmission of the virus and that heath workers had suffered a lower level of infection than during the SARS epidemic.
“It could be that improvements in infection control that were made after the outbreak of SARS have made a significant difference,†according to the W.H.O. statement.
Cases have been reported from eight countries in the Middle East and Europe, with several in which the virus has moved from one country to another through travelers.
At the height of the SARS panic a decade ago, officials were criticized for overreacting to a threat that in the end caused relatively few deaths worldwide.
However, some at the time defended their response.
“On the one hand, the level of attention given to SARS seems wildly disproportionate to the scale of the problem itself,†Duncan Watts wrote in Slate, “on the other hand, had it not been for this exaggerated sense of fear, we might have a truly frightening situation on our hands.â€
And, as David Quammen cautioned in an Opinion Pages article last month, “Every pandemic begins small.â€
Mr. Quammen, who referred to the Saudi Arabian outbreak, wrote, “The first obligation is informed awareness. Early reports arrive from afar, seeming exotic and peripheral, but don’t be fooled. One emergent virus, sooner or later, will be the Next Big One.â€
