Searching for animal models and potential target species for emerging pathogens: Experience gained from Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus

Vergara-Alert, Júlia; Vidal, Enric; Bensaid, Albert; Segalés, Joaquim

Until the beginning of the last decade, human coronaviruses (HCoV) infections were considered to be restricted to the upper respiratory tract (URT), with low mortality rate, and recognized as the second ranked cause of the common cold after rhinoviruses [4] . However, in the late-2002, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) emerged in China. It rapidly spread worldwide with more than 8000 causalities and a lethality rate of 10% [5] . Ten years later, a novel HCoV associated with severe pneumonia emerged in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [6] . The new CoV was named Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), and by March 2014, a total of 207 cases and 45% fatalities were recorded. One month later, only in April 2014, an increase in human cases was registered with at least 217 more infected people and 38 fatalities. More recently, as of December 2016, 1842 cases of MERS-CoV have been reported to the World Health Organization (WHO), including at least 652 deaths [7] .