In 2012, doctors in the middle east discovered a new respiritory illness, caused by a corona-virus.
It's symptoms were coughing, fever, severe breathing problems, followed by DEATH.
One of the first things we learned about this virus was that it was closely related to SARS.
SARS stands for "Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome".
Between 2002 and 2004, it infected over 8000 people people across 29 countries, causing 774 deaths before it was contained.
It turns out that the SARS coronavirus evolved in Bats.
Bats carry lots of different coronaviruses, and one of these mutated and made the jump up to humans.
So even though SARS is more or less extinct, scientists still warned of the possibility that yet another bat coronavirus could jump into humans.
So in 2012, all of those fears came true.
The virus was discovered after infecting a man in Saudi Arabia.
He had pneumonia, and the doctors tried everything, antivirals, antibiotics even antifungals, and could still do nothing to stop the disease.
Afterwards, they analysed his sputum
Sputum is the name for the gunk that comes out of your mouth when you cough.
It's produced in your lungs to gunk invading microbes together.
But , when there is a lot of them, it produces slightly too much, blocking up the airways.
You cough to clear those airways, pushing the sputum out of the lungs , into the air, complete with those invading microbes.
So if you want to find out what's causing the lung grief, the sputum is a good place to start.
The doctors used genetic sequencing to detect the invading organism, and they found that it was a coronavirus.
This is the coronavirus that would eventually be named the "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus".
Or MERS to it's friends, if it had any.
What's more it looked like MERS was related to the coronaviruses found in bats.
Open and shut case right ?
Problems came when researchers actually tried to find the MERS virus in bats, because it wasn't there.
They captured hundreds of bats, and tested them, an only one turned up positive for the virus.
Even though MERS was related to the viruses that live in bats, it didn't actually live within them.
It turned out, the real host was stariing everyone in the face the whole time, nonchalantly chewing the cud.
It turned out that Camels were the primary host for MERS, carrying it in their noses and their rectums.
But how does this virus transmit ?
If you drink camel milk, eat camel meat, but the main risk comes from living in close proximity with camels.
To actually cause an infection The MERS has to take a long journey past all of your natural defences to reach the vulnerable cells in your lungs.
After it reaches these cells, the virus is faced with another conundrum.
How can it escape the lung, to cause another infection?
