July 5, 2013

expert reaction to Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus transmissibility

Estimates of the transmissibility of the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS), published in The Lancet suggest that it does not yet have pandemic potential.

Professor Ian Jones, Professor of Virology, University of Reading, said:

“The current study confirms what has been seen in patients to date, that the current MERS Coronavirus transmits poorly, below the threshold required to become widely spread. The most important missing data is where the virus is coming from, as once that is known even these few cases should be largely avoidable.”

Dr Benjamin Neuman, Microbiology Research Group, University of Reading, said:

“The authors have done their best to predict how MERS will spread based on the few cases that we know about, and found that the virus appears to be slowly dying out.  But other work has shown that the virus is changing, and that change makes it difficult to predict the future of MERS.  What most concerns me is that people are still becoming infected from an unknown source.  Finding that source will be the key to stopping the spread of MERS.

“The other thing to watch for will be the possible appearance of super-spreaders – people who are much more likely to transmit the virus to others.  Super-spreaders played an important part in the early spread of SARS.  SARS coronavirus, like MERS coronavirus did not spread very well between people, and most people who caught the virus did not infect anyone else.  However, there were a few people early in the epidemic who, for reasons we do not fully understand, ended up transmitting the virus to dozens of other people.”

‘Interhuman transmissibility of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus: estimation of pandemic risk’ by Romulus Breban et al. will be published in The Lancet on Friday 5 July 2013.