Fakeih: 80% drop in MERS infections

June 6, 2014

Riyadh, Jun 6: There has been an 80 percent decrease in the number of MERS coronavirus cases during the past six weeks due to the preventive measures, Acting Health Minister Adel Fakeih has told the Shoura Council.

MERS infectionsFakeih enumerated the measures taken by the Ministry of Health in coordination with all local and global agencies and the ministry of agriculture. He said that the same efforts would be further intensified during the Umrah and Haj season to have the disease under control in the Kingdom.

“The ministry will be able to ensure proactive and swift action against future public health challenges, such as MERS-CoV through continuous coordination and monitoring. Topnotch clinicians, scientists, researchers and health care and emergency planning experts will work for a new health Command and Control Center (CCC).

The CCC will ensure that health challenges are managed with a systematic, holistic and comprehensive approach.

The center currently has 11 platforms, each of which is tasked with a specific topic, all under the coordination of the control tower platform.

“We have now documented every single MERS case that occurred in the Kingdom since September 2012,” the minister said, pointing out that so far 689 cases have been reported including 283 deaths. A total of 53 patients are under treatment and 353 have recovered from the illness.

He said the summer season would not aggravate the spread of the disease in the Kingdom. However, he added that concerted efforts must be made by people to observe personal hygiene to cover their noses while sneezing and coughing. He said the ministry is in the process of gearing up its 500 hospitals to meet the health challenges in the country.

Meanwhile, researchers have found the first direct evidence that the virus jumps directly from camels to humans.

The latest findings in the New England Journal of Medicine are based on a 44-year-old Saudi man who kept a herd of nine camels and who died of MERS in November 2013.

His friends said they witnessed him applying a topical medicine to the nose of one of his ill camels — four of them were reportedly sick with nasal discharge — seven days before he himself became stricken with MERS.

Researchers sequenced the virus found in one of the sick camels and the virus that killed the man, and found that their genomes were identical.

“These data suggest that this fatal case of human MERS-CoV infection was transmitted through close contact with an infected camel,” said the study led by Tariq Madani at the department of medicine, King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah.

Previous research has suggested that the virus has been quite common in camels for at least the past 20 years, and was likely making the jump into humans.

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Agencies
July 22,2020

Riyadh, Jul 22: Saudi King Salman held a cabinet meeting via video call from hospital in the capital Riyadh on Tuesday, a day after the 84-year-old monarch was admitted with inflammation of the gall bladder.

Three Saudi sources said the king was in stable condition.

A video of the king chairing the meeting was broadcast on Saudi state TV on Tuesday evening. In the video, which has no sound, King Salman can be seen behind a desk, wordlessly reading and leafing through documents.

The king, who has ruled the world’s largest oil exporter and close US ally since 2015, was undergoing medical checks, state media on Monday cited a Royal Court statement as saying.

Three well-connnected Saudi sources who declined to be identified, two of whom were speaking late on Monday and one on Tuesday, said the king was “fine”.

An official in the region, who requested anonymity, said he spoke to one of King Salman’s sons on Monday who seemed “calm” and that there was no sense of panic about the monarch’s health.

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News Network
May 2,2020

Dubai, May 2: Saudi Arabia has confirmed 1,362 new coronavirus cases, bringing the total number of COVID-19 patients in the country to 25,459, the Ministry of Health reported Saturday.

In the daily media briefing, the ministry announced 7 more deaths and 210 new recoveries, raising the total number of fatalities and recoveries to 176 and 3,765, respectively.

Out of the 1,362 new cases reported today, 249 were confirmed in Medina, 245 in Jeddah, 244 in Mecca, 161 in Riyadh, in addition to 126 infections in Dammam, 81 in Khobar and 80 in Jubail.

Dr. Mohammed Al Abd Al Aly, spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health reiterated that so far there was no evidence that hot weather will curtail the spread of coronavirus.

Authorities continue to urge people to stay at home unless necessary despite having relaxed some restrictions and curfews at the start of Ramadan.

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News Network
June 17,2020

Abu Dhabi, Jun 17: The Ministry of Education (MoE) has allowed students still enrolled in universities overseas to obtain exceptions to attendance policies at their respective academic institutions in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a statement, the ministry said that the move stems from its keenness to ensure the continuity of education for those students and to maintain effective channels of communication with them.

Students' applications for exceptions to academic attendance in universities due to Covid-19 should be submitted following the end of the academic year, and not after the academic semester, via the following email: [email protected].

In their email, students have to explain the reasons for the required exceptions and should include an official message from the university concerned.

Scholarship approval issued by the Ministry of Education for studying abroad should also be attached.

The student's score reports for the academic years spent in the host countries and the duration of each academic year should also be attached, in addition to an entry and exit report of the student from the Federal Authority for Identity and Citizenship.

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