The Deputy Minister of Health for Public Health and Chairman of the Ministry's Command and Control Center (CCC), Dr. Abdulaziz bin Saeed, stressed on the importance of applying preventive measures to control infectious diseases in general, with particular emphasis on the respiratory viruses including the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in the health facilities which were approved and circulated among all health affairs directorates in the provinces and regions, as part of the Center's efforts to control infectious diseases, and in continuation of the MOH's endeavors to bolster and support the improvement of all facets in the Saudi healthcare system needed to curb the spread of infectious diseases.
Dr. Saeed made this announcement during the regular meeting of the center held today, Tuesday. He pointed out that the Ministry will not tolerate any failure to comply with the infection control measures. In a similar fashion, Dr. Abdulaziz explained that the meeting reviewed the daily MERS-CoV cases and the measures taken on them.
The meeting was attended by scientists from the US-based Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who are currently visiting the Kingdom to help in conducting epidemiological surveillance researches relating to Coronavirus, to provide answers to many inquiries about the risks factors of the virus.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health (MOH) urged limiting contact with camels, particularly the newly born ones of less than two years old. In this regard, a new study on camels conducted recently in United Arab Emirates found that about 96% of the blood samples drawn from camels contain antibodies against MERS-CoV (more than 800 samples), and that the great majority of camels containing the live virus and able to transfer the infection were less than two years old. According to these results, the late separation of the young camels from their mothers up to the end of the second year might reduce probability of contact between human beings and the infectious young camels as contacting with these camels start after their separation from their mothers.
All the more, Dr. Abdulaziz said the meeting tackled the MERS-CoV awareness campaign launched recently by MOH under the theme (We can stop it) which includes several awareness activities executed by the Command and Control Center’s (CCC) media platform, in addition to discussing the reevaluation of the corona treatment centers as well as the suggestion put forth by one of the colleagues to classify these centers to three levels including excellence centers as known before, treatment centers and supporting centers.
Additionally, he underlined that MOH efforts will continue to make every effort to curb this virus, and lauded the efforts of all sectors supporting the Ministry in this field.