Combating the spread of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus: Indian perspective

The present spread of virus in South Korea was not unexpected in itself as the virus has already spread to so many other countries outside the Middle East and this time it would have just been like before. However, here it turned out to be the largest cluster of human cases outside the Middle East where even the secondary and tertiary cases were many and possibly some quaternary human cases.[7] The event started from a 68 years old index case, who had a recent history of visit to the Middle East from 18th April to 3rd May 2015 and developed symptoms on his return to South Korea and reported positive for MERS-CoV on 20th May 2015.[8] This individual case could have gone unnoticed, but only by 3rd June 2015, 30 positive cases with two deaths were reported and in next few weeks the number of MERS-CoV positive cases went up to 174 including 27 deaths.[9] This rapid spread of MERS-CoV within a short span of time has raised the possibility of the emergence of a mutant form with more virulence and better efficient human to human transmissibility. However, the result showing Korean MERS virus as non-mutant brought a sigh of relief, nevertheless, the threat of getting evolved remains and so does its chance of global spread.[10]