MERS Virus Update by SciFri published on 2013-07-29T14:23:15Z Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is an illness caused by a newly discovered virus in the same family as SARS. Most of the documented cases have come from Saudi Arabia, which has seen a 54 percent mortality rate in those patients. Martin Cetron, director of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discusses the emerging virus. Genre Science