WHO: New virus discovered that may be transmissible from person to person.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has just warned that the new coronavirus (NCoV) is likely to spread among people who have had contact with each other...
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the novel coronavirus (NCoV) can potentially spread among people in close contact. This information comes after the French Ministry of Health confirmed a second victim infected with the virus in a case that may have been transmitted from person to person. The virus, known as NCoV, is believed to cause pneumonia and sometimes kidney failure.
WHO officials have expressed concern about clusters of infections with the new coronavirus and the risk of human-to-human transmission. In a statement issued on May 12, the WHO said that different groups of patients in various countries are increasingly supporting the hypothesis that the new virus is capable of human-to-human transmission through close contact.
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NCoV is of the same strain as the virus that caused the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in Asia in 2003. However, according to the WHO, these two viruses are different. Coronaviruses cause respiratory infections in both humans and animals.
It is currently unclear whether this new virus strain is a variant of an existing strain or whether it originated in animals and then spread to humans.
Since 2012, there have been 33 confirmed cases of this virus across Europe and the Middle East, with 18 deaths. The first cases were detected in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, then spread to Germany, the UK, and France. The second case in France involved a 50-year-old man who shared a hospital room with a 65-year-old patient who had contracted the virus after returning from Dubai. Both patients were hospitalized in Valenciennes, northern France.
In Saudi Arabia, two more people died from the virus on May 12, bringing the total number of deaths in al-Ahsa in the eastern part of the country to nine.
According to Dan Tri - TH
