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Tag: Saudi Arabia

  • South Korea: 14 New MERS Cases Reported

    South Korea: 14 New MERS Cases Reported

    SEOUL: South Korea’s Health Ministry on Thursday reported 14 new cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), taking the total to 122 in an outbreak that is the largest outside Saudi Arabia.

    Among the newly reported cases was a pregnant woman who contracted the virus at the emergency ward of a Seoul hospital that has been linked to a number of other confirmed cases, the ministry said. She was reported to be in stable condition.

    The woman’s parents had also previously tested positive to MERS, the ministry said. The woman was reported to be in stable condition.

    MERS OUTBREAK DELAYS PARK’S US TRIP

    The spread of the disease has stirred up public fear and confusion, prompting President Park Geun-hye to postpone a visit to the United States, while health officials have been criticized over a lack of transparency and for failing to swiftly contain the spread.

    On Wednesday, the ministry reported two deaths from the MERS virus, bringing the number of fatalities to nine. All of those who died had been suffering serious ailments before they tested positive for the MERS virus, the ministry said.

    The outbreak, the largest outside Saudi Arabia, has fuelled public anxiety and hit spending, with thousands in quarantine and the number of schools closing rising to 2,474, including 22 universities.

    A joint South Korean-World Health Organization mission (WHO) on Wednesday recommended that schools be reopened as they were unlikely to spread the disease, just as school boards recommended more be shut.

    “Schools have not been linked to transmission of (the virus) in the Republic of Korea or elsewhere,” the mission said in a statement.

    TRAVELLERS AVOID AIRPORT DUE TO MERS SCARE 

    Airplanes, taxis and subways in South Korea are being disinfected to prevent the spread of MERS and protect passengers from transmission, as people avoided public transport in response to the outbreak of MERS.

    Seoul Metro, city-owned subway company, said on average 4,600,000 people take the subway daily but only about two million people took a subway on Sunday (Jun 7).

    Some countries around the region have issued advisories against travel to South Korea or stepped up screening of inbound passengers, dealing a setback to a tourism sector that had been a bright spot for the flagging South Korean economy.

    The main Incheon airport said the number of passenger arrivals was down sharply on Monday (Jun 8) and Tuesday.

    First identified in humans in 2012, MERS is caused by a coronavirus from the same family as the one that triggered China’s deadly 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). There is no cure or vaccine.

    South Korea’s new cases bring the total number of MERS cases globally to 1,271 based on WHO data, with at least 448 related deaths. The country has the second highest number of cases after Saudi Arabia, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

    South Korea’s infections have all been traced to a man who developed MERS after returning from a trip to the Middle East in early May, and who came into contact with other patients at a hospital before being diagnosed.

     

    Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

  • Measures Are In Place To Prevent MERS Outbreak In Singapore

    Measures Are In Place To Prevent MERS Outbreak In Singapore

    Local hospitals have been reminded to remain vigilant and to stand ready to screen and isolate individuals suspected to suffer from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) Coronavirus, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Wednesday (Jun 3).

    South Korea has confirmed five more cases of MERS, the Korean health ministry said early on Wednesday, bringing to 30 the total number of cases in the country of the often-deadly illness. All cases of infection in South Korea have been limited to household and hospital contacts among the patients, and all have been linked to the first identified case. Given this, the Health Ministry said there is no evidence of sustained community transmission in South Korea.

    MOH revealed in a press release that three categories of patients with clinical signs or symptoms of pneumonia or severe respiratory infection with breathlessness, who travelled to the Middle East in the two weeks before onset, will be referred to any of its public and private hospitals for further evaluation to exclude the infection.

    Patients from South Korea, and also those with fever and respiratory illness of any severity who had visited a healthcare facility while in the Middle East or South Korea will also be similarly referred, according to MOH.

    Clinics said they will step up their precautionary measures on the Health Ministry’s advice.

    “So when the situation gets worse, the Ministry of Health will tell us that we need to be vigilant and more alert about it,” said Dr Philip Koh, family physician at Healthway Tampines Clinic. “Then we will have to don our personal protective equipment, which is our masks, our gloves, and our goggles and basically the clinic will be turned into a pandemic centre of preparedness.”

    “What happens is when a patient comes in, who is suspected of having fever, cough and breathlessness, will be attended to by a nurse donned with this personal protective equipment at the entrance,” added Dr Koh.

    The Ministry said that temperature screening at air checkpoints for passengers arriving from the Middle East have been in place since May 18 last year. It said that health advisories continue to be in place at the local border checkpoints for travelers coming from and going to areas affected by MERS, and that screening may be ramped up to include passengers arriving from South Korea should evidence of sustained community spread turn up.

    SIA HAS PLANS TO MINIMISE DISEASE SPREAD

    Also on Wednesday, a Singapore Airlines (SIA) spokesperson assured that the national carrier has measures – “both on the ground and on board” – in place to “minimise the spread of diseases”. These include passenger screening by airport ground personnel.

    “If any passenger appears to be unwell, he or she will be asked to see a doctor immediately. We will not carry any passenger whom we believe is a risk to others on board,” the spokesperson told Channel NewsAsia.

    SIA added that it has developed standard operating procedures to handle various medical emergencies, including infectious diseases.

    The airline said these measures “will be coupled with the health regulations implemented by local authorities”, citing cabin crew basic first-aid training as one of such measures.

     

    Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

  • Thousands Of Saudi Forces Flee Bases, Refuse To Participate In Ground Assault In Yemen

    Thousands Of Saudi Forces Flee Bases, Refuse To Participate In Ground Assault In Yemen

    Almost 4,000 Saudi forces fled their border bases in anticipation of Riyadh’s order for launching a ground assault on Yemen, European diplomatic sources said on Sunday.

    “The intel gathered by the western intelligence agencies showed that the Saudi military forces have fled their bases, military centers and bordering checkpoints near Yemen in groups,” diplomatic sources were quoted as saying by Iraq’s Arabic-language Nahrain Net news website.

    The European sources said that the Saudi forces’ mass AWOL forced Riyadh to declare ceasefire and dissuaded it from launching ground attacks against Yemen.

    Other reports also said that over 10,000 soldiers from different Saudi military units have fled the army battalions and the National Guard.

    Experts believe that the Saudi army lacks strong morale to launch a ground invasion of Yemen and such an attack would be considered as a suicide for Saudi Arabia.

    Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen for 32 days now to restore power to fugitive president Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. The Saudi-led aggression has so far killed at least 3,005 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children.

    Hadi stepped down in January and refused to reconsider the decision despite calls by Ansarullah revolutionaries of the Houthi movement.

    Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi warplanes are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

    On Tuesday the monarchy declared end to Yemen airstrikes after four weeks of bombings, but airstrikes are still underway.

     

    Source: www.globalresearch.ca

  • Saudi Blogger Who Insulted Islam May Face Death Penalty

    Saudi Blogger Who Insulted Islam May Face Death Penalty

    Raif Badawi, the Saudi Arabian blogger who was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam, may now face the death penalty, his family says.

    In a statement published on Facebook, Badawi’s family says they’ve “received information from reliable sources” that Raif will be retried on charges of abandoning his religion by the same judge who has unsuccessfully tried to charge him with the crime twice before.

    “We have reasons to believe without any doubts that the same judge has again asked the Head of the Court of Apeal [sic] to charge Raif with ‘Apostasy’,” the statement reads.

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    Amnesty International, the international rights group that has been working to secure Badawi’s release, says the family’s claims could not be verified and that the controversial Saudi blogger shouldn’t be behind bars regardless.

    In May 2014, Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison, banned for life from giving media appearances and flogged for insulting Islam and violating Saudi Arabia’s information technology laws with his “Free Saudi Liberals” blog. His writing promoted secular and liberal views and denounced religious extremism.

    The judge’s attempt to charge Badawi with apostasy previously failed because the criminal court in Jeddah didn’t have the jurisdiction to rule on cases that resulted in the death penalty. Yet in  September 2014, that changed as Supreme Judicial Council gave the court the ability to rule on capital punishment cases.

    In their statement, the family renewed their call to have Badawi pardoned and permitted to fly to Canada, where he can be reunited with his wife and children.

    Ensaf Haidar, Badawi’s wife, is appealing to Sigmar Gabriel, the German vice chancellor and economic minister, who will travel to Saudi Arabia next week,Deutsche-Welle reports. Haidar appeared on German TV channel ZDF on Sunday and directly asked the country’s government to help secure her husband’s release.

    “I would like Vice Chancellor Gabriel to make contact with those responsible in Saudi Arabia and to ask them for Raif’s release, and not just for his release but also for an exit visa allowing him to travel from Saudi Arabia to Canada,” Haidar said.

    Gabriel said the German government is working on Badawi’s release, but that details shouldn’t be discussed on national television. In recent weeks, human rights groups and Germany’s opposition parties have criticized the German government for cultivating business ties and exporting military goods to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, which all have poor human rights records.

    Badawi received his first 50 lashes in a public flogging in January. He is supposed to receive 50 lashes every week until he has endured 1,000, buthealth complications from the first round  have prevented him from receiving any more, The Guardian reports.

    Source: www.newsweek.com

  • Did Yaacob Ibrahim Delegation Obtain Increased Quota Of Haj Participants From Singapore?

    Did Yaacob Ibrahim Delegation Obtain Increased Quota Of Haj Participants From Singapore?

    In a Facebook post on Friday evening, Minister for Muslim Affairs Yaacob Ibrahim said that he had met with Saudi Arabia’s Hajj Minister, Dr Bandar Bin Mohamed Al-Hajjar, on Thursday to discuss arrangements for the upcoming pilgrimage in September.

    Readers who had seen Yaacob’s post, however, were left confused on whether there would any increase in the Hajj quota this year. Although the minister mentioned that both he and Dr Bandar “agreed that the safety, welfare and security of the Hajj pilgrims must be given utmost priority”, he did not mention whether Dr Bandar had ever agreed to any increase in the Hajj quota.

    Source: www.allsingaporestuff.com