RIYADH: A young woman and an elderly man succumbed to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in Buraidah on Tuesday, even as three more fresh case of the virus were reported in Buraidah and Al-Rass during the past 48 hours.

The woman who died was 29 years old and the man 66, the Ministry Health said, adding that both of them were Saudi nationals.

Since June 2012, a total of 1,355 cases were reported in all parts of the Kingdom. They included 577 deaths and 761 recoveries. A total of 17 patients are currently taking treatment in different hospitals in the Kingdom. The ministry said that two men, including an expatriate worker, were discharged from hospital on full recovery. During the past 30 days, most of the reported MERS cases were from Buraidah.

Abdul Aziz bin Saeed, deputy health minister for public health, told Arab News that the high incidence of MERS in Buraidah was mainly due to the patients’ contact with camels.

He said the ministry has been closely monitoring the rise in the number of patients in Buraidah and found that they were largely transmitted through infected animals. “The cases are being closely monitored at the King Fahd Specialist Hospital in Buraidah.”

During winter, the minister said, young camels would have shed the virus which could attack humans in their vicinity, which could have been curtailed through precautionary measures by people.

He said that in December, the ministry conducted a survey of 160 camels in Jeddah and 50 of the juvenile camels were found to be carrying the virus.

“We assume that this is the situation among camels in other parts of the Kingdom too,” he said, urging people to take the maximum precautions against the virus.

In a statement issued last week , the World Health Organization (WHO) said contact tracing of household and health care contacts is ongoing for the cases detected recently in the Kingdom. The National IHR Focal Point for the Kingdom regularly notifies WHO of the MERS cases in the country.

Globally, since September 2012, WHO has been notified of 1,677 laboratory-confirmed cases of infection with MERS-CoV, including at least 597 related deaths.