In the spring of 2012, a Saudi Arabian man developed symptoms resembling severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. However, it wasn’t caused by the SARS coronavirus.

Instead it was identified as a new coronavirus named the Middle East Respiratory syndrome or MERS coronavirus. Globally, 2080 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection with MERS-CoV including at least 722 related deaths have been reported to WHO.

Director of CIDRAP at the University of Minnesota and author of the book, Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs, Michael Osterholm, PhD joined me to talk about the threat of MERS on a larger scale and what can be done to prevent it.

 

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Other podcasts with Dr Osterholm:

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Saudi Arabia
Middle East Image/W123 via Wikimedia commons