MERS-CoV update: Case accumulation over time and by region of suspected acquisition...

Click on chart to enlarge.

It's been about a month since I last updated this chart. While the situation is perhaps not yet worthy of the Jeff Golblum quote from Jurassic Park..."I'm fairly alarmed here"...it's heading that way for me.

There is quite an uptick in the slope of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's case numbers and also that of the United Arab Emirates.

This chart will bear watching and I'll endeavour to keep it updated on at least a weekly basis if the cases keep coming out at the rate they have been of late.

One thing to note though; because the KSA Ministry of Health data are patchy, inconsistent and slow. It may be that some/many of the dates for cases between the final 2 data points would spread into previous weeks. Unfortunately these dates have not yet been passed along to the WHO yet (or from the WHO to the public) and so the dates sometimes have to reflect date reported (which may lag behind onset of signs and symptoms by weeks) or date of hospitalisation rather than the more reliable date of illness onset. So take the chart as a trend...but one which may highlight a change in the speed of new case announcements.