March 06, 2018 at 11:13AM Emerging diseases | is MERS-CoV a threat for Africa?

Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) is a lethal disease in humans, caused by a coronavirus (MERS-CoV). It was first identified in man in 2012, in the Arabian Peninsula. The main MERS-CoV reservoir species is the dromedary, which is found in large numbers in many African countries. Why is it that they have never transmitted the virus to humans, as they have in parts of the Middle East? The first clues were published in an article in the journal PNAS on 5 March. The work in question associated researchers from CIRAD and several of its African partners, and an international team led by Professor Malik Peiris from Hong Kong University, who is Scientific Director of the Institut Pasteur's Hong Kong research pole.

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