Egypt investigates suspected MERS coronavirus death

Egyptian authorities are investigating whether a 60-year-old woman who has died in the city of Port Said had the SARS-like Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). If confirmed, it would be Egypt’s first death from the virus. The woman had recently returned from an Islamic pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, where the MERS coronavirus emerged in 2012, Helmi el-Efni, a Health Ministry official from the city on the Suez Canal, said on Monday. The MERS coronavirus is from the same family as the SARS virus, which killed around 800 people worldwide after first appearing in China in 2002.