The World Health Organization (WHO) is convening an emergency committee to evaluate the threat posed by the Middle East coronavirus (MERS).  Under the International Health Regulations, the emergency committee is comprised of international experts that evaluate the medical issue and advise the Director-General of the WHO if and when it becomes an international public health emergency.

MERS is caused by a coronavirus strain known as MERS-CoV.  The first reported case was in Saudi Arabia in 2012.  Since then, all cases have been linked to four other countries that are in or near the Arabian Peninsula.  There have been clusters that presented in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Tunisia, Italy, France, and the UK.  To date, the WHO has been informed of 79 cases of infection that have been confirmed by a laboratory as MERS-CoV.  Of these, there have been 42 deaths.

When someone is infected with MERS, they show symptoms including a severe acute respiratory illness, which includes symptoms of fever, shortness of breath, and coughing.  Some people only develop a mild respiratory illness.  The virus spreads through close contact with an infected person, which includes those that provide care for the sick individual or have similar physical contact and those that stay in the same place while the patient is sick.  A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that MERS results in considerable mortality.

MERS is just one type of coronavirus.  Other forms of coronaviruses can be quite common, with most people getting some form during their lifetime.  The most well-known coronavirus is SARS, which is a serious form of pneumonia that affected thousands around the world in a short period of time.  SARS is more contagious than MERS.  The majority of coronaviruses only affect one species or a few closely related species.  Only SARS-CoV affects a wide variety of species.  In addition to humans, it can affect monkeys, cats, dogs, rodents, and other rarer species.

The first time an emergency committee was convened was in 2009 to evaluate the threat of a pandemic from the H1N1 strain of influenza.  The committee was comprised from a number of experts, including professionals from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the U.S., the National Infection Control Program in Chile, the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control in the U.K., Curtin University in Australia, and the Ministry of Public Health in Thailand.