A brand new respiratory virus is circulating in the Middle East and of 80 cases, 44 people have died. MERS-CoV, as it has become known, is a coronavirus with close relatives in bats. In this podcast, experts speaking at a recent Public Health England conference talk about what we know so far and the important questions still to answer. We hear from John Watson, head of respiratory diseases at Public Health England; Brian McCloskey, director of global health at Public Health England; Monica Galiano, head of genomic sequencing at Public Health England's Virus Reference Department; and Ab Osterhaus, head of the Virology Department at the Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands.