The Camels and the Contagion
Inside the international hunt for the source of MERS
The Index Patient
All this was at the very beginning, a single week in the middle of June 2012, long before the sick man was understood to be the "index patient."
In clinical reports you don't see the popularized term "patient zero." Once the international detective hunt was under way, as one researcher after another joined in and the search and the connector clues spread around the globe—to Rotterdam and New York City, to the Spanish Canary Islands and Oman and Qatar, to France, England, Greece, Jordan, Egypt, Nigeria, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia, Indiana, and, just announced this past week, Florida—and as the questions and implications continue to spread, the man from Bishah has invariably been referred to as the "index patient"
