Ongoing evolution of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 2023-2024
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) circulates in dromedary camels in the Arabian Peninsula and occasionally causes spillover infections in humans. Due to lack of sampling during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, current MERS-CoV diversity is poorly understood. Of 558 dromedary camel nasal swabs from Saudi Arabia, sampled November 2023 to January 2024, 39% were positive for MERS-CoV RNA by RT-PCR. We generated 42 MERS-CoV and seven human 229E-related CoV by high-throughput sequencing. For both viruses, the sequences fell into monophyletic clades apical to the most recent available genomes. The MERS-CoV sequences were most similar to those from lineage B5. The new MERS-CoVs sequences harbor unique genetic features, including novel amino acid polymorphisms in the Spike protein. The new variants require further phenotypic characterization to understand their impact. Ongoing MERS-CoV spillovers into humans pose significant public health concerns, emphasizing the need for continued surveillance and phenotypic studies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".