Quantitative synthetic RNA for Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus can be used for assay development, verification, and validation as well as monitoring of day-to-day test variation and lot-to-lot performance of molecular-based assays. The quantitative format allows for the generation of a standard curve for quantitative PCR (qPCR) to determine viral load and for other molecular biology applications. This preparation includes fragments from the ORF1ab, ORF5, upper envelope (upE), ORF8b, nucleocapsid (N) protein gene, and 3' UTR regions.