Saudi MERS Virus Toll Rises to 52

The Saudi health ministry has announced that a woman in her 80s with the MERS virus has died in the Eastern Province, raising to 52 the death toll from the infection in the country.

It said the woman, aged 83, also suffered from chronic diseases.

Saudi authorities have recorded 124 cases of the infection, which has now claimed 52 lives, since it first appeared in September 2012 in the Gulf state, the world's worst hit country.

But no cases were announced during the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in the west of the kingdom earlier this month.

MERS is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died, and sowed economic chaos.

Source: AFP