 I'm Everly Kirk with the Global Health Policy Center here with Dr. Anne Schuchat. She is director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, and she's here to talk with us about MERS, also known as the Middle East Respiratory Center. Thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. First of all, tell us exactly what is MERS. It's something that developed in Saudi Arabia in 2012, right? This is a relatively new respiratory virus. It's related to the SARS or severe acute respiratory syndrome virus that we had about 11 years ago in China and the surrounding areas. But MERS is a pretty new respiratory virus that can cause very severe lung infection. At this point, about a third of all the infections are fatal, and so we're taking it very seriously. We don't know as much as we'd like to, but we have seen a great increase in cases this year in 2014, starting in about March and April. So how prevalent is it? Is it limited to the Middle East and Saudi Arabia, or is it spreading? Is it something that people in the United States should be worried about? There have been over 800 cases so far, about a third of which have been fatal. The vast majority have been in Saudi Arabia, or other countries near there in the Arabian Peninsula. But there's been spread of this virus through travelers who have been departing Saudi Arabia in a couple other countries, to Europe, to the United States, to North Africa, even to the Pacific. So we talk about new diseases are an airplane right away, and it's literally true with MERS. And this is something, if I understand it correctly, may be transmitted from animals to humans? There's emerging information on this. Right now the best information is that camels are important in acquiring MERS, but it also seems that there is spread person to person, particularly in the hospital environment. So right now we think it's critical to have really good infection control in the healthcare setting. We think camels might be involved in some of the cases, but we know that the majority of cases appear to have been acquired in healthcare settings. So our principal intervention here is really good infection control, isolating people who are ill with this, keeping them away from others, doing worker protection for the healthcare workers. And we think for others in the community, even in the Arabian Peninsula, certainly here in the U.S., that the risk is very low. And what is the CDC doing other than encouraging the good infection control? Talk about the research that's going on perhaps for something, a vaccine, or something to combat the virus. You know it's important to say with a new disease like this, we don't have a drug or a vaccine, but one of the most important things that CDC has done with this new infection is develop diagnostic tests. So that here in the United States, every state has the capacity to test for this new virus and figure out whether that severe respiratory illness in a person who's traveling back from the Arabian Peninsula is MERS or something else. So we've developed a test, we've shipped it out to all the states. We've sent it to dozens of countries around the world. And we think having a good suspicion, asking people with severe illness, have you traveled recently? Where have you been? Those are critical things for us to defend here in the U.S. and protect against spread. We have had two people travel back from Saudi Arabia to the U.S., develop MERS, hospitalized in Indiana and in Florida. But fortunately, good infection control around those patients and quick isolation has limited them so there was no spread within the U.S. Can you talk about the coordination between the U.S. and Saudi governments in addressing MERS? Yeah, the CDC has been really pleased to be able to partner with the Saudi Arabian government. We've had teams on the ground since May working closely with their command and control response. We think the Saudis are taking this very seriously. They have new leadership in place that is really working on a coordinated effort. Understanding that surveillance is important. Infection control is important. Understanding what's going on in the community is important. And really taking it seriously. And I would say the most important thing they're doing is the transparent way they're talking about things. They're updating their website every day with the new cases. And it's much easier for the world to see what's going on. You mentioned the number of fatalities. What's the difference between people who pass away from the disease and those who survive it? We have more to learn about this virus. But we know that people who die from it have often had other underlying conditions, chronic medical conditions as well. But we have seen fatalities in young, healthy people. About a fifth of the cases so far have occurred in healthcare workers. Doctors, nurses, technicians. That's very concerning because of course they're there to keep people well when we lose that workforce. It's difficult. We're thinking about this though as a virus that's new. We need to learn a lot more about it. One of our greatest risks is underreacting in the healthcare setting by not taking it seriously and instituting good infection control. And another risk is overreacting in the community. Shutting down society, stopping travel and trade. That would be too much. And that wouldn't be the most effective intervention. All right, Dr. Anne Schuchat, thank you so much for being here. My pleasure.