Geneva: The World Health Organisation said on Friday it would hold an emergency meeting next week on the deadly Mers virus, amid concern over the rising number of cases in several countries.
The UN health agency will host the emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss the worrying spread of the virus, which in less than two years has killed 126 people in Saudi Arabia alone, spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva. Lebanon has recorded its first case of the virus.
The Who’s emergency committee has already met four times to discuss the mysterious coronavirus, which surfaced in mid-2012.
“The increase in the number of cases in different countries raises a number of questions,” Jasarevic said, without giving further details of the aim of the new talks.
The Who experts will brief reporters at the end of the teleconferenced meeting on Tuesday evening, he said.
The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (Mers-CoV) is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the Sars virus that broke out in Asia in 2003, infecting 8,273 people and killing nearly 800 of them.
According to the most recent WHO figures, 496 Mers cases have been detected since September 2012.
The Saudi health ministry says 463 of them have been in the nation.
Mers cases have also been reported in the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and even the US, with most involving people who had travelled to Saudi Arabia or worked there, often as medical staff.
