Egyptian Minister of Health Adel El-Adawi said Tuesday that there are six suspected Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) cases, with only one confirmed case currently being hospitalised.

El-Adawi warned in a press conference of the spread of the respiratory "strong viral disease," due to Egypt's close proximity to Saudi Arabia, a country with a large number of diagnosed cases.

The first MERS case was diagnosed in an Egyptian man on Saturday. He had just came back from Saudi Arabia when he underwent medical examination on Friday in Cairo's Abbassiya Fever Hospital, where he was found to have contracted the deadly respiratory virus.

El-Adawi advised that anyone who feels the symptoms of fever or cough be examined, and added that the aviation ministry is stressing that airline passengers take themselves to the quarantine at the airport if they feel symptoms.

El-Adawi said that scanners detecting people with fever in airports are now fully operable.

MERS appeared in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2012 and is considered to be deadly. Although less transmissible, MERS is a cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003, killing nine percent of the 8,273 people it had infected.