Keeping Mers at bay - and the outbreak in perspective

UNTIL recent weeks, Mers (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) had been a vaguely vexing but still distant disease, yet another troubling outbreak in "another part of the world". Then came the first confirmed case in South Korea four weeks ago, and the unfortunate escalation of the epidemic in the country since.

Before the first South Korean Mers patient brought the coronavirus to his country in early May after a business trip to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Mers - first identified in humans in 2012 in Saudi Arabia - had largely been confined to the Middle East. Up till then, there had been around 1,1…