Since its discovery in 2012, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) coronavirus has killed 102 people in Saudi Arabia. The kingdom reported that on Sunday, a nine-month-old died, raising April's death toll to 39.
MERS has no known vaccine, and is believed to be a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus, which killed 775 people in Asia in the early-2000s. Al-Jazeera reports that the virus has been "extraordinarily common" in camels for more than 20 years, and may have been passed from animals to humans.
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