Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • Middle East Respiratory Syndrome is a dangerous, sometimes fatal virus only seen in the Middle

  • East and Europeuntil now. (Via National Institutes of Health)

  • "MERS is in the heartland. An American doctor from Indiana who had been working in Saudi

  • Arabia came down with symptoms on April 27. The next day, he was in the hospital, barely

  • able to breathe." (Via Fox News)

  • The Indiana State Department of Health told the Indianapolis Star, the unidentified patient

  • was admitted to a hospital in Munster Monday after visiting the emergency room there.

  • And on Friday, doctors say test results showed the patient was infected with the coronavirus

  • known as MERS and immediately quarantined. (Via Euronews)

  • According to the CDC, the MERS virus is a relatively new one. It was first reported

  • in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and is characterized by fever, cough and shortness of breath.

  • Since then, the World Health Organization confirmed infections in 262 people in 12 different

  • European countries. Out of those reported cases, 93 people have died.

  • According to CNN, the Saudi Ministry of Health has reported 339 cases and said nearly a third

  • of those have lost their lives. But not all of those cases have been confirmed by the

  • World Health Organization.

  • Health experts told NBC it was only a matter of time before MERS made its way to the U.S.

  • But officials say there's no reason to panic.

  • "There has not been a clear case of person to person transmission outside of the health

  • care setting yet. So I think we need to keep this in perspective." (Via NBC)

  • But as a precaution, Indiana state and federal health officials say they are working to locate

  • anyone who might have been in contact with the infected Indiana doctor. (Via CDC)

  • Indiana Governor Mike Pence told the Indianapolis Star, "I want to assure every Hoosier that

  • we have deployed the full resources of the Indiana State Department of Health to engage

  • in tracking this case, assessing the risk to the public and working to prevent the spread

  • of this virus."

  • The CDC says it's also checking all health care workers who helped treat the patient,

  • who is currently in good condition. The organization is not recommending anyone change travel plans

  • but is advising people to practice standard good hygine.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome is a dangerous, sometimes fatal virus only seen in the Middle

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it