Investigation Follows Trail of a Virus in Hospitals. A man in a Saudi hospital has pneumonia. The patient in the room next door gets sick, and before anyone realizes what is happening he infects seven others, each of whom infects at least one more. An outbreak is born. A detailed investigation of the viral illness first detected last year in Saudi Arabia has revealed the chilling ease with which the virus can spread to ill patients in the hospital — and its ability to infect some close contacts like hospital staff and family members who were in good health.
A report on the investigation published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine pinpointed the time it takes for a person to get sick after being exposed to the virus, a median of 5.2 days. The disease has now infected 64 people and killed 38 in eight countries. Saudi Arabia has had the most cases. The United States has had none. The disease was first recognized in Saudi Arabia last September, and was later named MERS, for Middle East respiratory syndrome.
But Dr. Dr. Photo. Tunisia: Man back from Saudi Arabia dies from coronavirus, 2 children treated and recovered. RABAT, Morocco — A 66-year-old Tunisian man has died from the new coronavirus following a visit to Saudi Arabia and two of his adult children were infected with it, the Tunisian Health Ministry reported. His sons were treated and have since recovered but the rest of the family remains under medical observation, the ministry said in a statement Monday. The World Health Organization confirmed the cases of the children, but said one of them was a daughter who was with her father for part of the trip to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. There was no immediate way to reconcile the differing reports. The cases are the first for Tunisia and indicate that the virus is slowly trickling out of Saudi Arabia, where more than 30 coronavirus cases have been reported. There have been at least 20 deaths worldwide out of 40 cases.
“These Tunisia cases haven’t changed our risk assessment, but they do show the virus is still infecting people,” said Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for WHO in Geneva. WHO warns coronavirus may be spreading. The World Health Organization has issued a blunt assessment of the coronavirus outbreak in Saudi Arabia, acknowledging for the first time that there are concerns the virus may be spreading from person to person, at least in a limited way. The statement called for urgent investigations to find the source of the virus and how it is infecting people.
And it reminded countries they have a duty to the international community to rapidly report cases and related information to the WHO. The worrying appraisal of the situation was echoed in a revised risk assessment issued Friday by the European Centre for Disease Control. It warned hospitals in Europe to be on the lookout for coronavirus cases coming in by air ambulance, saying the numbers of such patients may rise if the public in affected countries are afraid to seek care in their own hospitals. “There is no formal agenda for novel coronavirus but I would be surprised if it didn’t come up,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in an interview. 2012/2013 Case List of Known Novel Coronavirus Patients. WHO says new coronavirus may be passed person to person. 12 May 2013Last updated at 14:46 ET The World Health Organisation says it is closely monitoring the novel coronavirus The World Health Organization says it appears likely that the novel coronavirus (NCoV) can be passed between people in close contact.
This comes after the French health ministry confirmed a second man had contracted the virus in a possible case of human-to-human transmission. Two more people in Saudi Arabia are also reported to have died from the virus, according to health officials. NCoV is known to cause pneumonia and sometimes kidney failure. World Health Organization (WHO) officials have expressed concern over the clusters of cases of the new coronavirus strain and the potential for it to spread.
Since 2012, there have been 34 confirmed cases across Europe and the Middle East, with 18 deaths, according to a recent WHO update. Cases have been detected in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and have spread to Germany, the UK and France. Continue reading the main story. France reports first case of new SARS-like virus. Hong Kong Prepares for New Coronavirus. Coronavirus: is this the next pandemic? In mid-June last year, Ali Mohamed Zaki, a virologist at the Dr Soliman Fakeeh Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, took a call from a doctor who was worried about a patient. The 60-year-old man had been admitted to the hospital with severe viral pneumonia and the doctor wanted Zaki to identify the virus. Zaki obtained sputum from the patient and set to work. He ran the usual lab tests. One after another they came back negative. Puzzled by the results, Zaki sent a sample to a leading virology lab at Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. While he waited for the Dutch team to examine the virus, Zaki tried one more test of his own.
To alert other scientists, Zaki posted a note on proMED, an internet reporting system designed to rapidly share details of infectious diseases and outbreaks with researchers and public health agencies. Just how serious was clear by then. On its own, the Jeddah case was more intriguing than terrifying. Or so it seemed. So far, so reassuring. Saudi Arabia confirms 3 new coronavirus cases, brings total to 13. Saudi Arabia has confirmed three additional coronavirus infections in a growing cluster that involves a health-care facility in the eastern part of the country.
Limited details have been divulged. But the information that is available raises the spectre of person-to-person spread, potentially over several generations. Some details of the new cases were provided Sunday by Dr. Ziad Memish, the country's deputy health minister. Memish submitted the information to ProMED-Mail, an Internet-based infectious disease tracking system. "So far there is no apparent community transmission and transmission seem linked to one HCF (health-care facility)," Memish said in a short posting that revealed that two of the three new cases are already dead and one is on a breathing machine in critical condition.
Experts watching the outbreak with concern were quick to parse Memish's statement. The new cases bring the cluster to 13 infections, with seven deaths.