Via the KSA MOH Command and Control Center: MOH: '6 New Confirmed Corona Cases Recorded'. As the infographic shows, all are female expatriate healthcare workers, and all are asymptomatic. One expatriate man, not a healthcare worker, has recovered. No deaths are reported.
Plenty of healthcare workers have certainly fallen ill in earlier nosocomial outbreaks, so this spate of asymptomatic cases (20 out of 34 cases reported since June 1) raises interesting questions. Has the MERS coronavirus changed? Are more healthcare workers being tested? Is the test itself different? I have no idea.
To my knowledge, the Saudis have never conducted large-scale tests for MERS antibodies in the general population (or in healthcare workers except in outbreaks). Perhaps the number of asymptomatic MERS cases is far larger than we think.
Mike Coston at Avian Flu Diary has the story too, with some useful context.
