Mediaboss Marketing

Australians travelling to the Middle East could need a health check when they return if infections caused by a SARS-like virus continue to rise, a WA disease expert warns.

Curtin University professor of health science Charles Watson said a new viral agent from the same family of viruses that caused an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome 10 years ago had emerged in the Middle East a few months ago and recently spread to Europe.

By this week, 41 cases of the coronavirus, known as London1 novel CoV 2012, had been reported and half the patients had died.

Professor Watson, a public health physician and neuroscientist, said the virus was not highly infectious and had been limited to small clusters but if the number of cases kept rising it could pose a risk to other countries such as Australia.

Of particular concern would be the impact of the hajj, a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in mid-October which was expected to attract two million Muslims from around the world, including Australia.

Professor Watson said it might be necessary to set up a special system to track pilgrims returning from the hajj.

"While overall you would have to say the risk in countries like Australia is not great at this stage, it really depends if it keeps smouldering on," he said.

"If the epidemic was still going on at the time of the hajj, which is a huge gathering, then it would have implications for a whole lot of countries because you'd have a lot of people returning home who might get ill and pass it on.

"We'd probably have to recommend that everyone coming back from the Middle East have a medical check when they arrived back. I think that would be sensible."

Professor Watson said the potential for viruses to spread had increased with the higher speed of international travel, which allowed people to travel anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours. There were also continuing concerns about the new bird flu virus H7N9, which had spread to more than 100 people in China in recent weeks.

Originally posted here:
Killer virus alert for travellers