What is camel flu and what does the World Cup have to do with Qatar?
It is speculated that Rabiot, Upamecano and Coman of the French national team, who will face Argentina in the World Cup final in Qatar on Sunday, have contracted it. But what is the camel flu? Should we really care? Facts and expert opinions
Two days before the final between France and Argentina at the World Cup in Qatar, Didier Deschamps’ Les Bleus lose pieces. After Rabiot and Upamecano, Coman may also have contracted what is now nicknamed camel flu, or Mers, a disease caused by a coronavirus, a family to which Covid-19 also belongs.
The fear is that these may only be the most notorious cases due to the popularity of the players but when millions of fans return home will many more emerge?
THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE FRENCH NATIONAL TEAM
“He has a fever. We are trying to be careful so that this virus, which is affecting many players here at the World Cup, does not spread. You get sick when you get too tired, your body gets weaker and you are more vulnerable,” Deschamps said of Kingsley Coman, according to Corriere dello Sport , although there is no official diagnosis.
WHAT IS MERS THAT CAUSES CAMEL FLU?
The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, abbreviated with the acronym Mers from the English Middle East Respiratory Syndrome , is an acute infectious disease caused by a zoonotic virus that can be transmitted from animals to people.
In this case we are talking about dromedaries, hence the name of camel influence. The origin of the virus, reports the Ministry of Health , is not entirely clear, but based on the results of the analysis of the viral genome, it is believed to have originated in bats and later, in a remote era, transmitted to dromedaries.
MERS was first described in 2012 following cases found in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, ten years after the appearance of SARS in China.
SYMPTOMS
Mers generally causes a severe acute respiratory form characterized by fever, cough and difficulty breathing. Pneumonia is common, but not always present. Gastrointestinal symptoms, such as diarrhea, have also been reported. In some cases, infected people may be asymptomatic.
HOW BAD IS IT?
The Bambino Gesù children’s hospital in Rome says the virus responsible for MERS appears to be less easily transmissible from person to person than the SARS virus but is capable of causing more severe disease with a higher mortality rate.
The mortality rate for Mers, in fact, for the ministry is around 35%, while for the pediatric hospital it is around 30%, but this figure could also “be overestimated due to the failure to identify and report less serious cases”.
HOW IT IS TRANSMITTED
The majority of human cases, according to the latest update of the ministry dated 26 March 2019, were infected in healthcare environments, through person-to-person transmission, which however, in the absence of close contacts, hardly occurs.
Some scientific research suggests that dromedaries constitute the reservoir of the virus and can infect people, as well as their derivative products if not pasteurized.
THE GROUPS MOST AT RISK
In the past, Mers has affected more adults and the elderly, while it seems to be rarer in children. Furthermore, in children it usually has no symptoms or manifests itself in a milder way.
THE EPIDEMICS OF MERS
Again according to the 2019 update, the major outbreaks occurred in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Republic of Korea, but minor outbreaks of the disease were also found in other countries.
WHY IS IT TALKED NOW
In addition to the question raised by the health conditions of the French players, the Australian government published a statement on 2 December inviting all travelers returning from Middle Eastern countries, including fans who went to Qatar for the World Cup, to pay attention to any typical symptoms of the disease.
Even the English The Sun wrote that “the United Kingdom’s Health Security Agency has urged doctors to pay attention to people suffering from fever and breathing difficulties”. However, there is no document on the Agency’s website.
The invitation to increase the level of attention also came from a group of experts who wrote about it on December 13 in The Lancet recalling that, in addition to the World Cup, Qatar is also hosting a beauty contest for camels, which has raised hundreds of thousands of people, “creating the ideal conditions for the transmission of zoonotic pathogens associated with camels with epidemic potential”.
WHAT THE ITALIAN EXPERTS SAY
“I consider a minimum alarm threshold plausible with respect to a scenario of contagion from the so-called camel virus, not neglecting to remember that Mers is a serious but already known respiratory syndrome. Net of any regrettable psychosis, it must be said that Mers is the bad sister of Covid with much higher death risk percentages, however, from the available scientific literature, it appears to be much less contagious, with some doubts relating to the direct passage from man to man , which would make a strategic difference”, explained to Adnkronos Salute Mauro Minelli, responsible for Southern Italy of the Foundation for personalized medicine.
Matteo Bassetti, director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the San Martino Polyclinic in Genoa, is also of the same opinion, who referred to the disease as “an old problem that I don’t think will come out again”.
Also for Massimo Ciccozzi, head of the Medical Statistics and Molecular Epidemiology Unit of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery of the Bio-Medico Campus in Rome, “the risk of contagion from those returning to Italy from the World Cup in Qatar is very unlikely”.
Fabrizio Pregliasco, Professor of Hygiene at the State University of Milan agrees with them, according to whom the presence of a possible risk related to the spread of this virus should be seen “as a need for surveillance”.
In any case, the Spallanzani hospital in the capital ensures that it has “diagnostic and care capabilities even for serious patients requiring intensive care”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/che-cose-influenza-del-cammello-e-cosa-centrano-i-mondiali-in-qatar/ on Fri, 16 Dec 2022 14:07:28 +0000.