Woman dies of MERS raising Saudi toll to 52
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 Saudi Arabia, the health ministry announced Monday.
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.
© 2013 AFP
