In 2012, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) fi rst emerged in a patient who died of severe pneumonia in Saudi Arabia.1 Al though most cases confi rmed so far in the Middle East have been sporadic with an unknown source of infection, human-to-human transmission has been reported in health-care and household settings.2–4 However, the source of the virus and mode of disease transmission remain unknown despite detection of a small fragment of sequence identical to the EMC/2012 MERS-CoV in a Taphozous peforatus bat captured in Saudi Arabia5 and reports of cross-reactive antibodies to MERS-CoV in dromedary camels in Oman and the Canary Islands.