Man dies in Germany from Mers virus complications

A 65-year-old man has died in Germany from medical complications after being treated for the Mers-CoV virus that has spread through the Middle East and spilled out to other regions.

The man is believed to have contracted the virus from an infected camel during a visit to a livestock market in the United Arab Emirates in February.

Doctors treated the man for the respiratory virus after he fell ill and later released him from an isolation ward in the belief they had cured him. But according to the Lower Saxony health ministry, the man died on 6 June in the western town of Ostercappeln from lung disease after recovering from the Mers infection.

Michael Schiffbaenker, a spokesman for the Niels-Stensen group of hospitals, said on Tuesday that the hospital had agreed with the family not to release details of the fatal infection but said the Mers virus had weakened the man’s body.

More than 200 people who may have been in contact with him were subsequently tested, but no others were found to carry the virus. “Any contagion with the Mers virus of people in contact with the patient was able to be prevented,” the ministry said in a statement.

The death is the first in two years in Germany, and the third case in the country in total. Two patients from Qatar and the UAE were treated for the virus in 2012 and 2013, one of whom died.

Mers was first detected in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and has since spread across the Arabian peninsula and to Europe, Asia and North America. Globally, 1,200 people have fallen ill and at least 450 have died. Most deaths have occurred in people with other medical conditions and those with weakened immune systems.