MERS Coronavirus

MERS coronavirus: If you ever wonder why public health officials worry about far-flung diseases -- the latest bird flu, the new MERS coronavirus -- the incidents above pretty much explain it, according to CTV. Sometimes they hitch rides in the lungs of unwitting and unwilling carriers, people like the unfortunate Alberta woman who contracted H5N1 flu in China during a visit to Beijing and died last week, or the Toronto woman who in 2003 stayed in the Metropole hotel at the same time as a doctor from China who was about to die from SARS and TORONTO -- A Toronto grandmother came home from Hong Kong with SARS. A Colorado woman visited a Ugandan cave and brought back to the United States an alarming souvenir -- Marburg fever, a cousin of Ebola. And now H5N1 bird flu has jumped the Pacific in the body of an Alberta woman. Bugs travel. Or as public health folks like to put it, infectious diseases know no borders. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.