• Question: Hello Ruth, how can you stop the pipestral and Egyptian bats from infecting camels with the MERS virus?

    Asked by 239thuc45 to Ruth on 15 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Ruth Elderfield

      Ruth Elderfield answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      This one is a bit complicated.
      It is possible that before 1992 there was a bat who passed the MERS virus onto camels. Scientists think this is a possibility because viruses found in bats have some similarity to that found in the camels and in humans. But the identical virus has not been found in bats. Since 1992 the MERS virus has been spreading through the camel populations (we know this because scientists have looked in the camel blood the for antibodies made by the camels to fight off the MERS virus). So the MERS people are catching today appears to be coming directly from the camels with no bats involved. So to stop MERS we need to remove it from the camels.
      When people have tried to stop the spread of another virus by bats (rabies) they thought killing the bats might help, but instead it encouraged the bats to move around more and spread the even virus further faster.

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