The third patient is a 77-year-old woman who is hospitalized in critical condition.
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The patients from the ward, which is to remain closed for two weeks, are being transferred to other hospitals, she said.
But the King Abdulaziz Medical City said in an August 15 press release that in addition to 35 illnesses that had already been confirmed, majority in people who had visited the ED, a number of suspected MERS cases were under investigation there.
Although it does not pass easily between humans, the disease has a high mortality rate, with 480 of the 1,115 people Saudi Arabia has confirmed as having caught MERS since 2012 dying from it.
Saudi officials also reported three additional deaths in previously announced cases.
The others eight are all adults who range in age from 55 to 98.
According to the Ministry of Health Monday saw two deaths and nine new cases while on Tuesday one person died and nine were infected. This medical advancement is notable because there is no vaccine or effective treatment for the MERS virus, which is clearly able to transmit from human to human. Collaborators included researchers from NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Division of Intramural Research; Public Health Agency of Canada; Inovio Pharmaceuticals; the University of Washington; and the University of South Florida. Inovio has reported on the preventive power of its synthetic DNA-based vaccines in a variety of infectious diseasesincluding HIV, influenza, hepatitis B, Ebola and dengue. However, so far there are no vaccines or drugs that target the virus, thought to be harbored by camels. SARS killed some 800 people in a global outbreak in 2003.
Inovio Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:INO) today announced its DNA vaccine targeting the virulent Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) induced 100% protection from a live virus challenge in a preclinical study. In this preclinical study, our synthetic vaccine shows its capability to combat a disease for which there is no vaccine.
Because MERS mutates, researchers compared all the known protein sequences of the virus to create an “S spike protein” that would prevent infection by the virus. Animals that had been vaccinated with a control vaccine showed pneumonia symptoms and pathology.
The vaccine also induced neutralizing antibodies in mice, macaques, and camels.
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“There is a clear need for development of MERS-CoV vaccines”, said Frieman. Next, the group plans to explore how to condense the six-week timeframe to establish protection, and they are hopeful the vaccine will become a candidate for use in camels and people.
