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Can a New Tool Help Contain the Deadly MERS Virus?
Every year, millions of Muslims from around the world embark on the Hajj, a spiritual rite through the dusty granite hills of Mecca in Saudi Arabia that forms one of Islam's five pillars of faith. This year, the fatal Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) looms over the pilgrimage, which will take place in mid-October, leaving public health officials worried they may see another pandemic, as foreign pilgrims now account for more than half of Hajj participants and could bring the virus back home.
The BioMosaic tool. (image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Monitoring MERS
With MERS, BioMosaic enables U.S. health officials to analyze and visualize data -- anonymized for privacy -- about passengers flying between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and other countries along the Arabian Peninsula. They can detect travel patterns to show which airports and cities received the largest number of travelers from Saudi Arabia and take necessary precautions to prevent the spread of MERS into the U.S. Since the virus first emerged in June 2012 in Saudi Arabia, it has already appeared in Germany, France and the United Kingdom but has not yet reached the U.S. Of the 91 cases worldwide, only eight occurred outside of the Middle East and North Africa region, but half of those were fatal.
Dr. Khan recently completed a study of historic flight patterns in and out of Saudi Arabia during previous pilgrimages, examining peak travel periods and countries of origin.
According to the study, eight countries will most likely account for more than 50 percent of flights out of affected Middle Eastern countries and should be on their guard this year: India, Egypt, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Iran and Bahrain. These countries have “significant potential for MERS-CoV introduction via commercial flights,” writes Dr. Khan.
The report also discovered an important characteristic of these travelers. It notes that "two-thirds of visitors will be returning to low or lower-middle income countries where medical and public health capacity will be limited, and presumably where the risk of domestic transmission of imported MERS-CoV will be elevated."
Read the rest of this very interesting article by Rebecca Chao as it was published at the Tech President on August 1 2013