Absence of MERS-CoV antibodies in feral camels in Australia: Implications for the pathogen's origin and spread

Crameri, Gary; Durr, Peter A.; Barr, Jennifer; Yu, Meng; Graham, Kerryne; Williams, Owen J.; Kayali, Ghazi; Smith, David; Peiris, Malik; Mackenzie, John S.; Wang, Lin-Fa

If as suggested, sero-surveys of camels are undertaken in western Asia and they are found to be negative, the results will also have wider implications than answering the question of whether MERS-CoV was ever present in Australia. To date the geographical origin of MERS-CoV is controversial, as although the disease is largely confined to the Arabian Peninsula, examination of stored serum collected in Sudan and Somalia from 1983 to 1984 has showed very high seropositivity for MERS-CoV [32] . As MERS-CoV has now been shown to be widespread throughout camel populations in northern, western and eastern Africa [33] , there exists a plausible bat reservoir for a MERS-CoV ancestor [16] , and there is a large export of camels from eastern Africa into the Arabian Peninsula [34] , then a current working hypothesis is that Table 4 Australian bat species belonging to the genera shown to harbour lineage C β-CoVs (Table 3 ) and the extent to which their estimated home range overlaps that of the Australian feral camel population.