3rd MERS Case in the US: Silent Transmission, No Symptoms

An Illinois man caught MERS in the US from the infected Indiana man, but did not get sick. The Illinois man met with the infected Indiana man for 40 minutes and shook his hand.

This situation may help solve the mystery of why MERS cases suddenly spiked this April. People who get infected without getting sick may be carriers for a period of time.

Silently among us: Scientists worry about milder cases of MERS

....people with milder infections, who may be spreading the illness without being aware they have it.

...."Asymptomatic carriers of diseases can represent a major route for a pathogen to spread," said Dr Amesh Adalja of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

....there may be people with mild cases "that can serve as a way for the virus to spread to other individuals, which makes it a lot harder to control," Adalja said.

...."If they don't have animal contact, where do they pick it up? Potentially, asymptomatic cases," said Dr Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert from the University of Minnesota.

CDC tests show the man from Illinois had a MERS infection that passed without him getting symptoms. He is not considered an official case by the World Health Organization because the virus is no longer active.

Authorities continue to assure the public that MERS transmission between people requires close personal contact; transmission between humans is neither sustained nor easy.

Illinois Man is Third U.S. MERS Infection, CDC Says

…The new infection — the third reported in the U.S. and the first transmitted on American soil — is in an Illinois man who met and shook hands with a health care worker who was hospitalized in Indiana after traveling from Saudi Arabia and was diagnosed May 2 with MERS, or Middle East respiratory syndrome.

…laboratory tests showed that the man had evidence of an apparent past infection in his blood.

…“It’s possible that as the investigation continues others may also test positive for the MERS-CoV infection but not get sick,” Swerdlow added in a statement.

…MERS is spread through close contact, health officials say, and there’s no evidence of sustained transmission in public settings.

CDC: First case of MERS infection transmitted inside the U.S.

...The unidentified Illinois man had "extended face-to-face contact" during a 40-minute business meeting with an Indiana man who was diagnosed with MERS after traveling from Saudi Arabia, Dr. David Swerdlow told reporters during a telephone briefing.

A blood test confirmed the Illinois man had been previously infected, and he reported suffering only mild cold-like symptoms and did not seek or require medical care, Swerdlow said.

...The case does not meet the World Health Organization definition of an active case, which requires evidence of a live virus, according to Swordlow.

….The MERS virus appears to have presented differently in the Illinois man, who reported only mild-like cold symptoms.

"There is a broader spectrum of MERS than first thought... you can have no symptoms," Swerdlow said.

NOTE: The cause of the current MERS spike remains unknown - it can't be explained by hospital infections or exposure to camels.

Silently among us: Scientists worry about milder cases of MERS

(Reuters) - Scientists leading the fight against Middle East Respiratory Syndrome say the next critical front will be understanding how the virus behaves in people with milder infections, who may be spreading the illness without being aware they have it.

Establishing that may be critical to stopping the spread of MERS, which emerged in the Middle East in 2012 and has so far infected more than 500 patients in Saudi Arabia alone. It kills about 30 percent of those who are infected.

...."Asymptomatic carriers of diseases can represent a major route for a pathogen to spread," said Dr Amesh Adalja of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

....there may be people with mild cases "that can serve as a way for the virus to spread to other individuals, which makes it a lot harder to control," Adalja said.

Scientists are especially concerned because a lot of recent cases of MERS are among people who did not have contact with animals such as camels or bats that are believed to be reservoirs for the virus.

"If they don't have animal contact, where do they pick it up? Potentially, asymptomatic cases," said Dr Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert from the University of Minnesota.

Also note: The existence of asymptomatic cases suggests developed immunity, which suggests integration of MERS viral DNA into the human genome of previously exposed individuals, which suggests a kind of ecologically harmonized adaptation process involving shared genetic material.

Unexpected Inheritance: Human Genome Contains Ebola Virus Sequences

So this is how the camels repay us for all our years of exploiting their friendship.

The way this disease can be transmitted makes it harder to detect it's spread. People being carriers of disease is nothing new, some antibiotic resistant microbes live symbiotically in perfectly healthy individuals. These germs can kill others. That is why they have started limiting people from visiting people in some situations in hospitals. Most people visiting someone in the hospital do not go if they are sick, but do not realize they could be hurting the patients even if their is no evident sickness. I know a doctor who had an operation and she needed an antibiotic, it pissed off the C-Diff living in her nose symbiotically. It came out and attacked her face. Now she has been active in her field, how many people has she passed this on to. There are no required tests for health workers to determine what symbiotic microbes they harbor. It seems that these diseases multiply in the hospital setting.

We got a very big problem in our healthcare system.

a reply to: soficrow
Anyway they dont realy know how it spreads, how the virus propagation works, it could be airborn (inhalation), throw the skin (little perfuration our wound) our throw food and drinks (i dont believe this is it) .
I like de idea that naturally we develop antibodies our some kind of resistance, but it's only that one case;
For me just the fact that is happening in a country, were the decease is not endemic it's realy scary...

a reply to: rickymouse

MERS is a virus - not a bacteria or microbe (by definition). The prevailing wisdom was that people get MERS from camels, maybe bats - it is definitely a zoonosis - but human-to-human transmission might be more common than previously thought. Also, the assumption that MERS infection made people very sick isn't true. The "discovery" there might be MERS carriers is new, or at least not admitted publicly.

a reply to: rickymouse

Hospitals are the most germ-laden filthy places on the planet, far surpassing your average landfill/sewer/swamp. You couldn't aggregate a better hosting place for godknowswhat if you tried, and that includes every hospital that looks perfectly sterile and with a crack cleaning crew.

Any time you have to go into the hospital for any kind of procedure at all, take a shower in the hours beforehand with Betadine (iodine based, can be the generic) solution including diluting it and rinsing out your nose and eyes with it, and do the same thing when you get home before you touch anything else unless a shower is impossible. While you're in there, use alcohol hand cleaner on yourself all over to whatever extent you can, especially if you come in contact with anyone else, especially staff. Those nice white coats and nurse's scrubs are covered with other people's coughs, wound drainage and bodily fluids and as you pointed out, the staff themselves are carriers of all sorts of goodies. How could they NOT be??

Refuse visitors either in hospital or in the days afterwards and keep the hell away from the visitors of the person in the bed next to you, etc. Get the hell out of there as soon as you possibly can, your own germ collection at home is little threat to you, but the hospital's are all novel and as threatening as the Bio-Containment Level 4 lab at the CDC.

No, I'm not paranoid, whatever gave you that idea?

And ever notice how every year like clockwork, another one of these 'oooo, scary!' plagues comes out of the woodwork, they encourage everyone to have lots of crap injected into their arms, and then it goes poof and you never hear about it ever again, only to be replaced by another germy boogieman next year?

originally posted by: Bitxushanty
a reply to: soficrow
Anyway they dont realy know how it spreads, how the virus propagation works, it could be airborn (inhalation), throw the skin (little perfuration our wound) our throw food and drinks (i dont believe this is it) .
I like de idea that naturally we develop antibodies our some kind of resistance, but it's only that one case;
For me just the fact that is happening in a country, were the decease is not endemic it's realy scary...

Experts seem pretty sure it's not airborne yet, and currently requires close contact. I suspect that limited exposure (like from shaking hands) probably results in very low 'inoculation' that the body can fight off easily without overwhelming the immune system. That "low inoculation" business seems to be key for surviving most (if not all) diseases. ...Main point being limited exposure is better than no exposure.

originally posted by: signalfire

Hospitals are the most germ-laden filthy places on the planet, far surpassing your average landfill/sewer/swamp. You couldn't aggregate a better hosting place for godknowswhat if you tried, and that includes every hospital that looks perfectly sterile and with a crack cleaning crew.

...Those nice white coats and nurse's scrubs are covered with other people's coughs, wound drainage and bodily fluids and as you pointed out, the staff themselves are carriers of all sorts of goodies. How could they NOT be??

Refuse visitors either in hospital or in the days afterwards and keep the hell away from the visitors of the person in the bed next to you, etc. Get the hell out of there as soon as you possibly can, your own germ collection at home is little threat to you, but the hospital's are all novel and as threatening as the Bio-Containment Level 4 lab at the CDC.

S&

...I suspect it comes back to level of exposure, and already compromised immune system. Recipe for disaster.

And ever notice how every year like clockwork, another one of these 'oooo, scary!' plagues comes out of the woodwork, they encourage everyone to have lots of crap injected into their arms, and then it goes poof and you never hear about it ever again, only to be replaced by another germy boogieman next year?

Industrialization + globalization + climate climate change = accelerated evolution in viruses, bacteria and other microbes. The wild ride is only gonna get wilder.

Hospitals in the US and Canada are issuing warnings and stepping up controls. Nearly 75% of recently reported MERS cases result from human-to-human transmission - no camels or bats involved. The Good News: MERS does NOT spread easily or efficiently between people.

According to the WHO, nearly 75 per cent of recently reported cases of MERS are "secondary cases," many of whom are health-care workers who have contracted the virus within a healthcare environment.

H1N1 doesn't make many people very sick either and as I found out the hard way, in 1/3 of the cases H1N1 doesn't cause a fever.

After I found this out, I wondered if getting vaccinated against the flu doesn't spread it more. Vaccinations can cause people to get a lighter form of the disease which would enable them to spread the virus without knowing they are very sick.

As for the poster who said hospitals are dangerous places - they are so right. I was in the hospital for 3 days before they realized I had H1N1 - I pretty much coughed over everything and everyone at that hospital.