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Showing posts with label Bangladesh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bangladesh. Show all posts

Back to 21 countries with MERS....still no party ensues

Well, it looks like some of us jumped the gun and did not tick all of our self-imposed quality assurance boxes. Yes, definitely including me.

With the sample(s) from a Bangladeshi expatriate apparently testing negative at a second laboratory, the previous comments by Prof. Mahmudur Rahman announcing a MERS-CoV positive traveller returning form eh USA via the UAE, seem to have lacked solid support from reliable laboratory analysis. It certainly makes more sense for the test result to be a false positive than the alternative; a very strange concurrence of circumstances which lead to the MERS-CoV infection that was announced.

Since it was never formally announced, it may never be formally retracted, but it would be nice to know precisely what led to the positive result and how things proceeded from there.

So this puts another of those wonderfully wild, hypothesis-generating, hand-waving MERSmoments where we tried to bend reality into a shape capable of fitting in the box made out of everyone's overly eager need to report things fast and first....behind us.

Nothing to see here. Move along. D'Oh.

Click on map to enlarge.

*POSSIBLY NOT* Country #22 to have been paid a visit by the MERS-CoV: Bangladesh [UPDATED x2]

Looking like this result could not be confirmed 
by external testing.
June 20th 


The case, a 53-year old male (53M) returned to Dhaka, Bangladesh on 4-June from New York (the United States of America), via Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates). He became symptomatic on 6-June and was hospitalized 9-June.

Director of the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR), Prof. Mahmudur Rahman, speculated that 53M was likely to have contacted MERS-CoV in the UAE. It's not clear whether he transited through the Abu Dhabi airport (apparently he was at the airport for 3-hours, h/t @influenza_bio; seems like a very unlucky acquisition then[4]), or stayed there for some time. 
It's also not clear how long he stayed the the USA for. The WHO have been informed, according to reports.

A 2-day incubation period is a bit on the short side for MERS-CoV though. Eagerly awaiting the WHO DON on this case.

[UPDATE] It looks like this sample could not be repeated. If I read any further announcements I'll post them here buit for now it appears that the two samples may have been false positive results. How that could happen I'm really not able to imagine. But we'd need to know more about the testing to answer that.

Sources...

  1. FluTrackers thread
    http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?p=537546#post537546
  2. Treyfish's H5N1 pandemic information news blog
    http://swineflumagazine.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/more-on-bangladesh.html
  3. The Daily Star
    http://www.thedailystar.net/mers-detected-first-time-in-bangladesh-28635
  4. Channel NewsAsia
    http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/health/bangladesh-reports-first/1162024.html

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