Tehran: A woman has died from the Mers coronavirus infection in Iran’s southeastern province of Kerman, the first victim of the disease in the country, media reported on Thursday.

The 53-year-old woman was one of two sisters who had tested positive for the illness, the health ministry said on Wednesday.

“Despite all the efforts made by the medical staff, the patient who was infected by the coronavirus passed away,” Mohammad Mahdi Gooya, the chief of the transmissible diseases unit of the health ministry, told Fars news agency.

The patient suffered from high blood pressure and her immune system could not fight the virus, Gooya added.

Gooya said the second sister was in good condition and had been discharged from hospital.

Meanwhile, Mahdi Shafiei, head of the disease prevention unit in Kerman, was quoted by Mehr news agency as saying that there are six other suspected cases in the province.

The vast majority of Mers cases worldwide since the virus’ discovery two years ago have been in Saudi Arabia.

Nearly all cases recorded elsewhere have been among people who had recently travelled to the kingdom or the Gulf region, or had been in contact with someone who had.

Nearly 900,000 Iranians make the pilgrimage to the Muslim holy places in Saudi Arabia each year, most of them during the Hajj, which this year falls in October.

Gooya said on Wednesday that Iranian authorities would test all returning pilgrims and that anybody displaying potential symptoms would be kept under quarantine for two weeks.

Mers is considered a deadlier but less transmissible cousin of the Sars virus, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, that appeared in Asia in 2003 and killed hundreds of people, mainly in China.

Like Sars, it appears to cause a lung infection, with patients suffering coughing, breathing difficulties and a temperature. But Mers differs in that it also causes rapid kidney failure.

Studies have confirmed that the likely source of the disease is among Saudi Arabia’s huge camel herd.

But a cluster of cases among medical staff and hospital patients in the kingdom in recent months have shown that the virus can be transmitted from person to person unless strict precautions are taken.