Health Officials Confirm 4 MERS Infection Cases in Iran

Ghorbani on Monday said that during a meeting with the commission, the health minister has confirmed that four Iranians have contracted the illness.

He noted that one of those diagnosed with the severe respiratory disease has died.

MERS first emerged in 2012 and is mostly focused on Saudi Arabia, where it has claimed tens of lives so far.

Ghorbani said Iran’s health ministry in coordination with the Hajj and Pilgrimage Organization has dispatched an experienced and proficient medical team to the Persian Gulf kingdom to disseminate information among Iranian pilgrims on the virus and provide them with necessary medical care.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Corona-Virus causes coughing, fever and sometimes fatal pneumonia, killing an estimated 30 percent of those who are infected.

There is no vaccine or specific treatment for MERS, which has killed more than 175 people in Saudi Arabia and spread throughout the region, also reaching as far as Malaysia, Greece, Lebanon and the US.

MERS is a virus from the same family as SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed about 800 people worldwide after it first appeared in China back in 2002.