Recently another outbreak of MERS virus( Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus in the Middle East) has caused the concern of health systems around the world.

The "Middle East respiratory syndrome" is an acute, severe respiratory disease, originally occurs mainly in Saudi Arabia and other Middle East, then spread to other countries. By the end of June 2nd, 2015 accumulation in the global infections has reached 1157, among them 434 patients died.So far, there has been no vaccine or specific medicine against the MERS virus, so that the mortality is as high as 40%.At the end of the May, South Korean appeared the first imported MERS case; Within two weeks, cases of new infections have sharply risen to 18. Last week, our country also appeared the first imported MERS case.

The latest scientific research demonstrates that: MERS virus may come from the camel, and directly contact with infected camel may cause the initial infection of humans.

In the year of 2014, with RT-PCR Methods, Haagmans and other scientists detected that in the dromedary nasal swabs (usually as a gathering of microbe, the secretion of exfoliated cells or medical examination thereof) there were gene fragments similar to MERS virus among the samples.Then, Briese conducted experiments in live virus of dromedary nasal swab samples with recovery, culture, and whole genome sequencing measures.The results showed that: the dromedary source sequence of virus sources is almost the same to human MERS virus sequence.

What's more, the camel is likely to be infected by more than one strain of MERS virus at the same time. Middle-aged subclinical infected people who often contact with camels may be a MERS source of infection and pass MERS virus to the ordinary people who have never contact with camels, even those who never see the camel.

The battle with MRES has just started.

At present, MERS cases are continuing to increase, looking for MERS early detection methods, exploring the invasion mechanism of virus and screening of antiviral drugs will be a necessary means for infectious disease research. Now, the commercialization of research reagents products have been developed in China and listed (e.g The Spike Recombinant proteins of MRES virus, NP Recombinant proteins, antibodies, gene expression and over-expression cell cracking products, etc.). Hoping that with the advanced scientific research methods and tools, we can develop fast detection methods and treatment methods aiming at MERS and other deadly infectious diseases as soon as possible.