"Deadly new virus emerges from Middle East where it has killed 38,000 people in a year"

From The Daily Mail:

A deadly new virus that has emerged in the Middle East is thought to be more dangerous than SARS after it killed 38,000 people in a year.

More than 60,000 cases of SCWS (Syrian Civil War Syndrome) have been reported in the last year by the World Health Organisation. Most of those who have the disease, which can spread easily between Sunnis and Shiites, were in Syria, reported Fox News, with isolated outbreaks in Lebanon.

There was a global outbreak of SARS in 2003, killing 800 people, and some experts note the resemblances between the two as both spread easily between towns and cities.

Symptoms are also similar, with many homeless refugees suffering from a fever and cough that develops into pneumonia. Other symptoms include profuse bleeding from bullet wounds and in extreme cases missing limbs or instant death.

But, doctors note that the fatality rate is higher. Eight per cent of SARS patients died, while 65 per cent of SCWS cases are believed to have been fatal. However, the illness so far has not spread as quickly as SARS did.

Dr. Trish Perl a senior hospital epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine said that she thought it was a lot like SARS. She added: "In the right circumstances, the spread could be explosive.

"In fact, explosives appear to be the underlying transmission mechanism in the majority of cases."