Some groups organizing hajj pilgrimages to Mecca are increasingly worried about the outbreak of a new deadly virus in the Middle East, RFE/RL reports.
The Association of British Hujjaj (Pilgrims) is one. The Birmingham-based group, which offers guidance to hajj participants, is warning prospective travelers to take special precautions ahead of the October event:
"We would like to warn those people who have low body immune systems that they should not attend this year's hajj. And for the rest of the people, we would strongly recommend that they [check their health with] their doctor before their departure," says Khalid Pervez, general secretary of the organization.
"We also recommend to people that while they are in Saudi Arabia they follow hygiene guidelines. They should not share utensils, and they must not cough while they are amongst the crowd."
The warnings are part of a wave of worry over the mounting number of deaths from the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). The virus, which emerged in the region late last year, has so far infected more than 60 people, killing 38 of them.
That's a far higher death rate than SARS, the related severe acute respiratory syndrome that broke out 10 years ago in Southeast Asia. SARS, which killed more than 775 people in a global epidemic in 2003, was fatal to only 10 percent of those infected.
But while alarm over MERS-CoV — which can cause victims to suffocate — is high, health experts say that for now only normal health precautions appear to be necessary.
"My advice for the hajj at the present time is that there need not be any special consideration beyond what I would recommend for large gatherings, and that is that personal hygiene should be as good as possible," says Ian Jones, a professor of virology at the University of Reading in Britain.
"You should take care of food hygiene, of course, and you should generally avoid situations which seem to be suspicious in terms of the cleanliness of the establishment. So, don't put yourself at obvious risk. But that would apply to a number of communicable diseases, not only this one."
Health experts are encouraged by the fact that there have been a relatively small number of cases reported to date, most of them in Saudi Arabia. That suggests that the virus spreads to humans much more slowly than SARS did 10 years ago.
Investigators suspect that the hosts of the MERS-CoV virus are Middle Eastern bats, which — like many animal species — carry viruses that are not harmful to themselves but can endanger people. How the virus moves from bats to humans is not known, but possible routes could be eating contaminated food products or handling intermediary animals such as goats and camels that have been bitten by bats and fallen sick.
