1. Home
  2. MERS death toll raised to 282; deputy health minister fired

MERS death toll raised to 282; deputy health minister fired

June 4, 2014

Riyadh, Jun 4: The Ministry of Health on Tuesday said the Kingdom’s death toll from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is actually 282, or 92 more than the tally recorded as of June 2.

MERS deathAccording to the Ministry of Health’s Command & Control Center, which was set up last week by Acting Health Minister Adel Fakeih, the new data came about following a thorough review by the center starting from September 2012 to the present day.

New data also showed that the total number of infections in the Kingdom is actually 688 rather than 575 as reported in the ministry’s website on Monday.

“Following the review, the total number of cases recorded in the Kingdom since 2012 stands at 688 including 282 fatalities; 53 are currently receiving treatment while 353 have recovered,” said the report released by the center on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, the ministry announced on Twitter that Deputy Health Minister Ziad Memish, who played a frontline role in the campaign against MERS, has been relieved from his post.

Memish was the second top Health Ministry official to lose his post apparently as a result of the coronavirus crisis.

In April, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah replaced then Health Minister Abdullah Al-Rabeeah as the number of MERS infections and deaths spiked, causing panic among the public.

The king named Labor Minister Fakeih as acting health minister in a concurrent capacity.

Last month, Fakeih sacked the top management of King Fahd Hospital in Jeddah after numerous medical staff reportedly got infected, causing some of the hospital’s Saudi doctors to resign.

No reason was given for the dismissal of Memish, who had been the ministry’s point man in the campaign against MERS since the coronavirus was first discovered in September 2012.

A Reuters report said international scientists interviewed for a Reuters Special Report last month have chided Memish for being reluctant to collaborate with some specialist laboratories around the world offering to help investigate the possible source of MERS and explore how it spreads.

“Experts say the rising number of infections and deaths could have been stopped well within the two years since MERS first emerged — and would have been if Saudi authorities had been more open to outside help offered by specialist teams around the world with the technology, know-how and will to conduct scientific studies,” said the report.

It said Memish was asked last month about the criticisms and said he was “surprised” but did not respond to the allegations directly concerning his own role.

Reuters quoted David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology, chairman of Public Health England, and head of global health security at Britain’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, as saying “Saudi Arabia needs to make sure it has appropriate infection control practices in hospitals, where cases are being transmitted, and number two, they need to do the case-control study that will hopefully tell them how people are getting infected.”

Acting Health Minister Fakeih wrote last week in a response to the Reuters Special Report that Saudi Arabia was working with international scientific organizations to improve its response to MERS, and pledged to continue that collaboration, said the report.

The rate of infection has slowed since mid-May, which public health officials say may be a result of improved infection control procedures introduced in Saudi hospitals.

New measures

The Health Ministry said it had put in place new measures to make sure data gathering, reporting and transparency were being observed, including standardization of testing and better guidelines for labelling and storing samples.

“While the review has resulted in a higher total number of previously unreported cases, we still see a decline in the number of new cases reported over the past few weeks,” Tariq Madani, head of the ministry’s scientific advisory board, was quoted as saying in an e-mailed statement.

The main objective of the review was to ensure a more complete and accurate understanding of the MERS-CoV outbreak in the Kingdom. The review has already enhanced the Ministry’s policy development process and improved measures taken to address the situation.

Madani added: “This review has informed the Ministry’s policies, which took stringent action to combat MERS-CoV, announcing the establishment of the new Command and Control Center to increase the level of preparedness for future public health challenges, issuing infection control protocols to contain the spread of the virus, and directly engaging the public with an awareness campaign.”

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
February 5,2020

Paris, Feb 5: Saudi Arabia has reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N8 bird flu virus on a poultry farm, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said on Tuesday, February 4.

The outbreak, which occurred in the central Sudair region, killed 22,700 birds, the OIE said, citing a report from the Saudi agriculture ministry.

The other 385,300 birds in the flock were slaughtered, it said.

The case was the first outbreak of the H5N8 virus in Saudi Arabia since July 2018.

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
May 7,2020

Dubai, May 7: Saudi Arabia will emerge as the victor of the oil price war that sent global crude markets into a spin last month, according to two experts in the energy industry.

Jason Bordoff, professor and founding director of the Center for Global Energy policy at New York’s Columbia University, said: “While 2020 will be remembered as a year of carnage for oil nations, at least one will most likely emerge from the pandemic stronger, both economically and geopolitically: Saudi Arabia.”

Writing in the American publication Foreign Policy, Bordoff said that the Kingdom’s finances can weather the storm from lower oil prices as a result of the drastically reduced demand for oil in economies under pandemic lockdowns, and that it will end up with higher oil revenues and a bigger share of the global market once it stabilizes.

Bordoff’s view was reinforced by Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former chairman of Royal Dutch Shell and one of the longest-standing directors of Saudi Aramco. In an interview with the Gulf Intelligence energy consultancy, he said that low-cost oil producers such as Saudi Arabia would emerge from the pandemic with increased market share.

“Oil is the only commodity where the lowest-cost producers have contained their production and allowed high-cost producers to benefit. When demand recovers this year or next, we will emerge from it with the lowest-cost producers having increased their market share,” Moody-Stuart said.

Bordfoff said that it would take years for the high-cost American shale industry to recover to pre-pandemic levels of output. “Depending on how long oil demand remains depressed, US oil production is projected to decline from its pre-coronavirus peak of around 13 million barrels per day.

“Shale's heady growth in recent years (with production growing by about 1 million to 1.5 million barrels per day each year) also reflected irrational exuberance in financial markets. Many US companies struggling with uneconomical production only managed to stay afloat with infusions of cheap debt. One quarter of US shale oil production may have been uneconomic even before prices crashed,” he said.

Moody-Stuart said that recent statements about cuts to the Saudi Arabian budget as a result of falling oil revenues were “an important step to wean the population of the Kingdom off an entitlement feeling. It means that everybody is joining in it.”

The former Shell boss said that other big oil companies would follow Shell’s recent decision to cut its dividend for the first time in more than 70 years. But he added that Aramco would stick by its commitment to pay $75 billion of dividends this year.

“When a company looks at its forecasts it looks ahead for one year, so for this year it (the dividend) is fine,” he said.

Bordoff added that Saudi Arabia’s action in cutting oil production in response to the pandemic would improve its global position.

“Saudi Arabia has improved its standing in Washington. Following intense pressure from the White House and powerful senators, the Kingdom’s willingness to oblige by cutting production will reverse some of the damage done when it was blamed for the oil crash after it surged production in March,” he said.

“Only a few weeks ago, the outlook for Saudi Arabia seemed bleak. But looking out a few years, it’s difficult to see the Kingdom in anything other than a strengthened position,” Bordoff said.

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
August 2,2020

Dubai, Aug 2: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced on Saturday that it has started operations in the first of four reactors at the Barakah nuclear power station - the first nuclear power plant in the Arab world.

Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC), which is building and operating the plant with Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) said in a press release that its subsidiary Nawah Energy Company "has successfully started up Unit 1 of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant, located in the Al Dhafrah Region of Abu Dhabi".

That signals that Unit 1, which had fuel rods loaded in March, has achieved "criticality" - a sustained fission chain reaction.

"The start-up of Unit 1 marks the first time that the reactor safely produces heat, which is used to create steam, turning a turbine to generate electricity," said ENEC.

Barakah, which was originally scheduled to open in 2017, has been dogged by delays and is billions of dollars over budget. It has also raised myriad concerns among nuclear energy veterans who are concerned about the potential risks Barakah could visit upon the Arabian Peninsula, from an environmental catastrophe to a nuclear arms race.

Paul Dorfman, an honorary senior research fellow at the Energy Institute, University College London and founder and chair of the Nuclear Consulting Group, has criticised the Barakah reactors' "cheap and cheerful" design that he says cuts corners on safety.

Dorfman authored a report (PDF) last year detailing key safety features Barakah's reactors lack, such as a "core catcher" to literally stop the core of a reactor from breaching the containment building in the event of a meltdown. The reactors are also missing so-called Generation III Defence-In-Depth reinforcements to the containment building to shield against a radiological release resulting from a missile or fighter jet attack.

Both of these engineering features are standard on new reactors built in Europe, says Dorfman.

There have been at least 13 aerial attacks on nuclear facilities in the Middle East - more than any other region on earth.

The vulnerability of critical infrastructure in the Arabian Peninsula was further laid bare last year after Saudi Arabia's oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais were attacked by 18 drones and seven cruise missiles - an assault that temporarily knocked out more than half of the kingdom's oil production.

On Saturday, Dorfman reiterated his concern that there is no regional protocol in place to determine liability should an accident or incident at Barakah result in radioactive contamination spreading from the UAE to its neighbours. 

"Given Barakah has started up, because of all the well-rehearsed nuclear safety and security problems, it may be critically important that the Gulf states collectively evolve a Nuclear Accident Liability Convention, so that if anything does go wrong, victim states may have some sort of redress," Dorfman told Al Jazeera. 

The UAE has substantial oil and gas reserves, but it has made huge investments in developing alternative energy sources, including nuclear and solar.

Experts though have questioned why the UAE - which is bathed in sunlight and wind - has pushed ahead with nuclear energy - a far more expensive and riskier option than renewable energy sources.

When the UAE first announced Barakah in 2009, nuclear power was cheaper than solar and wind. But by 2012 - when the Emirates started breaking ground to build the reactors - solar and wind costs had plummeted dramatically.

Between 2009 and 2019, utility-scale average solar photovoltaic costs fell 89 percent and wind fell 43 percent, while nuclear jumped 26 percent, according to an analysis by the financial advisory and asset manager Lazard.

There are also concerns about the potential for Barakah to foment nuclear proliferation in the Middle East - a region rife with geopolitical fault lines and well-documented history of nuclear secrecy.

The UAE has sought to distance itself from the region's bad behaviour by agreeing not to enrich its own uranium or reprocess spent fuel. It has also signed up to the United Nation's nuclear watchdog's Additional Protocol, significantly enhancing inspection capabilities, and secured a 123 Agreement with the United States that allows bilateral civilian nuclear cooperation.

Comments

Add new comment

About text formats
  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.