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Second MERS Case in US

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The second U.S. case of MERS has been confirmed in Florida. The patient is a health care worker who lives in Saudi Arabia. The patient traveled from Jeddah to London to Boston to Atlanta and then to Orlando on May 1, according to news sources. The patient began feeling ill during travel including symptoms of, “fever, chills and slight cough”, according to Dr. Anne Schuchat, assistant surgeon general who serves as the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.   Testing in the coming weeks will determine if this patient infected any of the 500+ people who may have been exposed to him/her.   MERS has an incubation period of 14 days, so if anyone was infected, they would start exhibiting symptoms in the next 1-2 days.  Similar to the SARS epidemic in 2003, we saw that one person spread the disease to 10 or more people, which classifying them as a super-spreader. In the second case of MERS the hospitals are isolating the contagious individual and any further spread of this disease.  Until we are able to screen travelers for fever, this disease will continue to spread globally. Temperature surveillance is essential as the first line of defense to identifying the infected and to stop the spread of diseases like MERS.


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