The novel coronavirus spreading outward from Wuhan, China, will get an assist from a subset of infected people who transmit it to many others.
Kenyan health workers from port health services screen inbound travelers for temperatures at Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
EPA/Daniel Irungu
Airport public health officials have got better at screening at ports of entry especially for international arrivals.
A worker in Wuhan, China removes biomedical waste from the Wuhan Medical Treatment Center, where many patients of the coronavirus have been treated, on Jan. 22, 2020.
AP Photo/Dake Kang
The coronavirus that has sickened hundreds in Wuhan, China, has worried health officials and other humans across the globe. Should people in the US worry?
Health authorities are worried because they don’t know how dangerous this strain of coronavirus could be.
Facundo Arrizaba BALAGA
The virus seems to spread like any other respiratory illness – through coughs and sneezes, or contact with contaminated surfaces. Here’s what we know about it so far.
Chinese cobra (Naja atra) with hood spread.
Briston/Wikimedia
A new coronavirus related to SARS and MERS has now traveled from China to the United States. A genetic analysis reveals that this deadly pathogen may have originated in snakes.
Bats are the only mammals capable of true flight. Scientists believe flight may influence their immune responses to coronoviruses, which cause fatal diseases such as SARS and MERS in humans.
(Shutterstock)
Scientific studies show that bats may carry “coronoviruses” causing SARS and MERS - without showing symptoms of disease. Could the bat immune system be key to human survival in future pandemics?
QuRapID can find Ebola in a drop of blood in just over an hour.
A virus like SARS can shut down cytokine production, enabling it to multiply to higher levels and causing significant infection and even death.
(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Kevin Frayer)
We’ve all endured infections. Here’s how it works when our bodies are attacked by viruses, bacteria or parasites, and our innate immune system becomes the first line of defence.
African camels could prove to be an important source of information about the MERS virus.
Eric Fèvre
Viruses cause all kinds of infections from relatively mild cases of the flu to deadly outbreaks of Ebola. Clearly, not all viruses are equal and one of these differences is when you can infect others.
Avoiding contact with people who have respiratory infections – and are coughing or sneezing – is the key to protection.
Jina K/Shutterstock
Twelve years ago the world was threatened by an outbreak of a new coronavirus called SARS. MERS belongs to the same virus family and has killed 19 people in South Korea.
It’s unclear whether Spanish dog Excalibur, pictured here with owner Javier Limon (husband of Ebola-infected nurse Teresa Ramos), was infected.
EFE/PACMA
Spanish authorities have euthanised the dog of Madrid nurse Teresa Romero Ramos, who contracted Ebola. The 12-year-old dog, Excalibur, was not showing symptoms and was not tested for Ebola. But he lived…
When you hear hooves, shout camel, not bioterrorist.
Delpixel/Flickr
The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a tiny, spiky package of fat, proteins and genes that was first found in a dying man in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2012. Since then, we…
Many people infected have had no contact with camels or other animals.
Al Jazeera English/Flickr
The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS Co-V) emerged in 2012 and has caused ongoing illness in the Middle East and more than 280 deaths. The public health response to MERS-CoV has been…
Coronaviruses are the cause of both the 2003 SARS and the recent MERS outbreaks.
Eneas/Flickr
A team of European researchers has identified a novel compound that stops coronaviruses from replicating. The study, published in PLOS Pathogens today, also pinpoints the juncture in the virus’ life cycle…
The discovery that dromedary camels may be a key source of the virus behind Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) looks to unravel one of the biggest mysteries surrounding outbreaks of the deadly…
Dean Faculty of Health Sciences and Professor of Vaccinology at University of the Witwatersrand; and Director of the SAMRC Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit, University of the Witwatersrand