Chafekar, AasiyahFielding, Burtram C.2018-03-132018-03-132018Chafekar, A. & Fielding, B.C. (2018). MERS-CoV: Understanding the latest human coronavirus threat. Viruses, 10(93)1999-4915http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/v10020093http://hdl.handle.net/10566/3575Human coronaviruses cause both upper and lower respiratory tract infections in humans. In 2012, a sixth human coronavirus (hCoV) was isolated from a patient presenting with severe respiratory illness. The 60-year-old man died as a result of renal and respiratory failure after admission to a hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The aetiological agent was eventually identified as a coronavirus and designated Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). MERS-CoV has now been reported in more than 27 countries across the Middle East, Europe, North Africa and Asia. As of July 2017, 2040 MERS-CoV laboratory confirmed cases, resulting in 712 deaths, were reported globally, with a majority of these cases from the Arabian Peninsula. This review summarises the current understanding of MERS-CoV, with special reference to the (i) genome structure; (ii) clinical features; (iii) diagnosis of infection; and (iv) treatment and vaccine development.en© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Human coronavirusMERS-CoVClinical featuresUpper respiratory tract infectionsLower respiratory tract infectionsRespiratory virusesArticle