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| Note. Not every death or case is listed. See bottom-left corner for breakdown. Click on charts to enlarge. |
As usual, it's mostly about males and older people until we get to the Jeddah outbreak.
In the top pair of charts (note the different scale used here compared to that used in the charts below) we see the breakdown for all MERS-CoV detections to date on the left and the fatal cases from among those on the right.
An apple in terms of people shapes.
In the middle pair of charts we look at all cases form 2012 up until the day before the Jeddah outbreak. The total case pyramid shows an older age bulge but the deaths look very similar to those for all fatal outcomes. M:F is similar to the total case charts above.
In the bottom pair of charts we're looking at what happened from the beginning of the Jeddah outbreak until now. We see a marked change in distribution with many more younger adults being positive for MERS-CoV. We also see a major shift towards more females than we'd seen beforehand. All the result of more widespread testing and a greater healthcare worker contribution I presume. Strangely though, given the younger adult demographic here, we see no accompanying jump in numbers of children. Are they not subject to testing? Are the younger adults often foreign workers who do not have children/children with them with them? There is no reason for children to test any less frequently MERS-CoV-positive and they are also just as likely as healthy adults to get mild or asymptomatic disease (as far as we know). If positive, children will have an important potential role in the MERS-CoV transmission story, especially when visiting elderly relatives.
The recent Al Qunfudhah teacher who is MERS-CoV just reinforces that children are shaping up to be a strange data gap. Yeah. I know. Another one.
