Middle-East respiratory syndrome coronavirus: Is it worth a world panic?

摘要

In- 2012 Middle-East respiratory syn-drome coron-avirus(MERS-CoV) was evolved in- the Arabian- Pen-in-sula. Tre-men-dous an-d successful efforts have been- con-ducted to discover the gen-ome structure, epidemiology, clin-ical sign-s, pathogen-esis, diagn-osis an-d an-tiviral therapy. Taphozous perforatus bats are the in-crimin-ated reservoir host and camels are the currently confirmed an-imal lin-ker. The virus resulted in- less than- 1000 in-fected cases an-d 355 deaths. The case fatality rate of the MERS-Co V is high, however, man-y survivors of MERS-CoV in-fection- showed in-apparen-t in-fection-s an-d, in- several cases, multiple co-in-fectin-g agen-ts did exist. Although MERS-CoV appears to be a dan-gerous disease, it is argued here that a full assessmen-t of curren-t kn-owledge about the disease does n-ot suggest that it is a truly scary killer.