WHO Not Mulling State of Emergency Over MERS Virus Outbreak

VIENNA, December 9 (Sputnik) — The World Health Organization (WHO) is not yet considering declaring a state of emergency over the outbreak of the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), which has affected more than 20 countries since it was first reported two years ago, WHO principal legal officer Steven Solomon told Russia's Sputnik news agency on Tuesday.

"We do not need to declare yet, at this stage, a public health emergency with the respect to MERS," Solomon told Sputnik on the sidelines of the Conference on Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna.

The virus that causes respiratory illnesses was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and has since spread to a number of Arab, European and North African countries, with all cases somehow linked to its place of origin. The disease has also been detected in the United States and Indonesia.

In October, the WHO said that 317 of the 877 MERS cases reported to the organization were fatal. On Monday, the Saudi Health Ministry published an update on the MERS outbreak in the country, saying the number of reported cases stood at 819 since June 2012, with 190 deaths.

Solomon emphasized that, "we will keep watching it, we have to, and we will be looking for ways to address it, prevent it spread, and stop it if does spread".

According to the WHO official, MERS is an infectious disease that the organization follows very closely, after Ebola.

Scientists from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Colorado State University found out in September that camels could be the primary reservoirs or carriers of the coronavirus. The virus has been found in camels in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt, but scientists still have not figured out its initial source or developed a vaccine to treat it.