Overview
- Both French patients are men in their 70s who had traveled to the Arabian Peninsula in November.
- Monitoring of 34 tour-group contacts and hospital exposures found no additional infections by December 19.
- Genetic analysis linked the French viruses to strains circulating in the Arabian Peninsula, indicating travel-related exposure.
- WHO has recorded 19 MERS cases and four deaths in 2025, with most reported in Saudi Arabia, and assesses the global risk as moderate.
- ECDC considers sustained spread in Europe extremely unlikely, and WHO advises strict infection control and avoiding raw camel products given the camel reservoir.