Camels transmitted MERS to humans, but virus probably came from bats

One of the earliest known victims of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus — a retired Saudi military man who owned a herd of camels outside of Jeddah — almost certainly was infected when he applied a topical medication to the runny nose of one of his sick animals, a new study says.

But the authors of the latest effort to pinpoint the origins of the MERS virus said the farmer’s camel was probably an intermediate MERS host, and suggested that bats named for the Egyptian tombs they inhabit may have been the virus’ first sanctuary.