WHO: Majority of recent MERS patients were health workers

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday that a majority of those who recently contracted coronavirus in the Kingdom were health workers.
The WHO statement was based on a Health Ministry report that notified the world organization of 17 additional MERS cases, including three deaths.
The organization pointed out that at least 12 of 17 recently confirmed MERS patients were health care workers.

Globally, since September 2012, WHO has been notified of 1,401 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS-CoV infection, including at least 500 related deaths.
Since June 2012, the number of MERS cases in the Kingdom has reached 1,087 which included 474 deaths, 588 patients recovered from the illness and 25 patients currently under treatment in the hospitals throughout the Kingdom.
Based on the current situation and available information, WHO encourages all member states to continue their surveillance for acute respiratory infections and to carefully review any unusual patterns.

Infection prevention and control measures are critical to prevent the possible spread of MERS-CoV in health care facilities. 
It is not always possible to identify patients with the disease early because, like other respiratory infections, the early symptoms of MERS-CoV are non-specific. Therefore, health care workers should always apply standard precautions consistently with all patients, regardless of their diagnosis.
Droplet precautions should be added to the standard precautions when providing care to patients with symptoms of acute respiratory infection; contact precautions and eye protection should be added when caring for probable or confirmed cases of MERS-CoV infection; airborne precautions should be applied when performing aerosol generating procedures.