Middle east respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus

MERS or also known as the camel flu, is another severe strain of coronavirus that originated in Saudi Arabia in 2012. This more recent outbreak was also deadly as it produced severe flu-like symptoms including fever, cough, diarrhea and shortness of breath and had a mortality rate of 33% of infected patients. Similarly to the SARS strain of coronavirus, the origins of MERS were also zoonotic most likely from infected bats transmitted to camels. Since 2012, there have been 2,494 confirmed cases of MERS in 27 countries and 858 people have died from the disease.