On his VDU's blog, Dr. Ian Mackay writes about MERS-CoV and the host: a serious disease for those with disease. Excerpt:
Case total currently stands at 150 including 64 deaths (PFC of 43%), with the World Health Organisation's latest update adding in the recent death (their tally says 149/63) and the Oman case and a new death being reported from eastern Saudi Arabia. The details for this latest patient are (FT#152):
• 56-year old male
• Comorbidities
• Contact of a previous case.
So, as the Oman case showed, transmission from a previous case can lead to mild illness. The Qatari case before that showed that a contact can be asymptomatic. This latest fatality highlights that under the right pre-existing disease conditions, even a 2nd "passage" of virus from a human to another human, can result in death.
It's a very much about the health of the human host who acquires the virus, as we've seen all along with MERS and also among cases of influenza A(H7N9) virus infection.
