New Koronavirus case in Britain

[American_Jihad]

A masked man looks at a model of the coronavirus of SARS at city hall in Taipei in 2003. A SARS epidemic killed more than 800 people in 2003.


New coronavirus case in Britain brings worldwide total to 12; WHO urges vigilance on SARS-like disease​

The latest coronavirus patient is a relative of the two other Britons diagnosed with the virus last week, officials said. The first of the family to contract the SARS-like disease had recently traveled to the Middle East.

AFP RELAXNEWS
Monday, February 18, 2013

...

Read more: New coronavirus case in Britain brings worldwide total to 12; WHO urges vigilance on SARS-like disease - NY Daily News

 

[waltky]

The Next Pandemic?...

Coronavirus: is this the next pandemic?
Friday 15 March 2013 - Last September a doctor in a Saudi hospital was fired for reporting a new, deadly strain of the coronavirus. Now, with half of all confirmed cases ending in death, the World Health Organisation has issued a global alert and scientists are preparing for the worst

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. This time he got a positive result. It showed the infectious agent belonged to a family of pathogens called coronaviruses. The common cold is caused by a coronavirus. So is the far more deadly infection Sars. Zaki quickly emailed the Dutch lab to raise the alarm. Their tests confirmed his fears, but went further: this was a coronavirus no one had seen before.

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. The move cost him dearly. A week later, Zaki was back in his native Egypt, his contract at the hospital severed, he says, under pressure from the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health. "They didn't like that this appeared on proMED. They forced the hospital to terminate my contract," Zaki told the Guardian from Cairo. "I was obliged to leave my work because of this, but it was my duty. This is a serious virus." Just how serious was clear by then. While Zaki had worked to identify the virus, the patient's health had declined. His pneumonia worsened; his breath got shorter. His kidneys and other organs began to falter and fail. Despite all the drugs and dialysis, and mechanical ventilation to help him breathe, the man was dead 11 days after he arrived at the hospital.

Professor Ali Mohamed Zaki, who diagnosed the first patient with a strain of the coronavirus in Saudi Arabia, stands in his office in Cairo.

On its own, the Jeddah case was more intriguing than terrifying. Though much was made of the virus being related to the one that causes Sars, which spread to more than 30 countries and killed 800 people in 2003, the two are genetically very different. Sars was scary because it spread so easily and killed so often. It circulated in families, and tore through hospitals. The Jeddah patient was but a single case.

Or so it seemed. Since the virus came to light in September last year, the number of cases has risen to 15. More than half have died. The latest death was a 39-year-old man, reported by Saudi Arabia this week. The numbers are not yet alarming, but the steady appearance of fresh cases, and the fact that the infection has now spread from person to person, has sparked an intensive effort to understand the virus, and quietly prepare for the worst. "We don't know whether this virus has the capability to trigger a full epidemic. We are completely in the dark about it," says Ron Fouchier, a molecular virologist at Erasmus Medical Centre whose lab identified Zaki's virus. "We think what we are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg, but we don't know how big the iceberg is, or where the iceberg is."

MORE

 

[waltky]

Coronavirus death in Germany...

Emirati man dies of SARS-linked virus in Germany
Mar 26,`13 -- A man from the United Arab Emirates who was infected with a new SARS-related virus has died in Munich, German authorities said Tuesday.

The case brings the number of confirmed human cases of new coronavirus infection worldwide to 17, according to the World Health Organization. Of these, 11 have died. The city hospital in Munich said the 73-year-old patient, who was transferred from Abu Dhabi on March 19, had been suffering from an unspecified "serious underlying condition" that meant his chances of survival had been slim.

The new virus was first identified last year in the Middle East, and most of the patients infected had traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Pakistan. In recent weeks two people in Britain have also died after becoming infected with the virus, most likely from family members. The new coronavirus is part of a group of viruses that cause ailments including the common cold and SARS. In 2003, a global outbreak of SARS killed about 800 people worldwide.

Health experts still aren't sure exactly how humans are being infected. The new coronavirus is most closely related to a bat virus and scientists are considering whether bats or other animals like goats or camels are a possible source of infection. The World Health Organization has asked countries to notify it of all new cases of new coronavirus infection but hasn't recommended travel or trade restrictions.

Source

 

[blackcherry]

A minimum planet population drop of at least 25% should be to everybody's advantage -- shrugging at the loss of around 2 billion .
Guess you win a big one by losing a few of the small ones .

 

[American_Jihad]

A minimum planet population drop of at least 25% should be to everybody's advantage -- shrugging at the loss of around 2 billion .
Guess you win a big one by losing a few of the small ones .

I seen that progressive/liberals with the use of agenda 21 want to get rid of 90% of the worlds population, the good news is you made the list...

Bye bye blackhole...

 

[waltky]

Coronavirus kills 5 in Saudi Arabia...

Saudi Arabia Sars-like virus 'kills five'
2 May 2013 - Five people in Saudi Arabia have died from a Sars-like virus and two more are seriously ill, officials say.

The seven cases were all from al-Ahsa governorate in the east of the country, the Saudi news agency SPA said citing health officials. The novel coronavirus (NCoV) causes pneumonia and sometimes kidney failure. It is from the same family of viruses as the one that caused an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) that emerged in Asia in 2003.

WHO notification

In the statement released by SPA, the Saudi health ministry said it was taking "all precautionary measures for persons who have been in contact with the infected people... and has taken samples from them to examine if they are infected". However, the ministry gave no details on how many people had been tested for the disease. In a statement, the World Health Organization said the cases were not from the same family and preliminary inquiries showed "no indication of recent travel or animal contact" in any of the confirmed cases.

In March, WHO said it had been informed of 17 confirmed cases of NCoV worldwide, including 11 deaths. Cases have been detected in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Germany and the UK. Correspondents say the exact source of the new virus and how it spreads are still unknown. One theory is that it comes from animals. The threat to the general population is thought to be small, although the virus has shown signs of spreading in people.

According to WHO, the last known death from NCoV was a 73-year-old man from the United Arab Emirates in March. In February, a patient died in a hospital in Birmingham, England, after three members of the same family became infected. It is thought a family member had picked up the virus while travelling to the Middle East and Pakistan.

BBC News - Saudi Arabia Sars-like virus 'kills five'

 

[waltky]

Granny says its dat endtime plague - we all gonna die...

Saudi Arabia Reports 13 Cases of Coronavirus
May 08, 2013 — Saudi Arabia has 13 cases of a new strain of coronavirus that has emerged from the Gulf, has killed seven people in the kingdom and spread as far as Britain and France, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia has reported 23 confirmed cases in total, Qatar two, Jordan two, Britain two and the United Arab Emirates one, the WHO said. Although there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human spread, there are concerns about clusters of cases. France reported its first case on Wednesday.

The Saudi outbreak was restricted to al-Ahsa governorate in Eastern Province and all those infected had pre-existing health conditions, Arab News newspaper quoted Doctor Jafar al-Tawfiq, an infections specialist in Eastern Province, as saying. Officials at Al-Moosa hospital in the town of Hofuf in Ahsa, where the patients are being treated, declined to comment. WHO spokesman Glenn Thomas said in Geneva on Wednesday that Saudi authorities are organizing a mission with two WHO staff and that their focus will be on Hofuf.

Saudi state news agency SPA quoted Deputy Health Minister Mansour al-Hawasi on Tuesday as saying the situation "called for no concern" and that the ministry had taken all precautions around anyone who had been in contact with those infected. Worldwide, there have been 30 laboratory-confirmed infections, including 18 deaths, since it came to scientists' attention last September, the WHO's Thomas said.

Other strains of coronavirus can cause common colds as well as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged in Asia in 2003 and killed 775 people. A retrospective study in Jordan found that there had been an outbreak of the new virus there as long ago as April 2012, with two confirmed cases and 11 probable ones, including 10 health care workers, the WHO's Thomas said.

Saudi Arabia Reports 13 Cases of Coronavirus

 

[waltky]

Coronavirus now likely spread person-to-person...

WHO says new coronavirus may be passed person to person
12 May 2013 - 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 33 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. "Of most concern... is the fact that the different clusters seen in multiple countries increasingly support the hypothesis that when there is close contact this novel coronavirus can transmit from person to person," the World Health Organization said on Sunday. "This pattern of person-to-person transmission has remained limited to some small clusters and so far, there is no evidence to suggest the virus has the capacity to sustain generalised transmission in communities," the statement adds.

France's second confirmed case was a 50-year-old man who had shared a hospital room in Valenciennes, northern France, with a 65-year-old who fell ill with the virus after returning from Dubai. "Positive results [for the virus] have been confirmed for both patients," the French health ministry said, adding that both men were being treated in isolation wards. Meanwhile, the Saudi deputy minister of health said on Sunday that two more people had died from the coronavirus, bringing the number of fatalities to nine in the most recent outbreak in al-Ahsa governorate in the east of Saudi Arabia, Reuters news agency reports. The Saudi health ministry said that 15 people had died out of the 24 cases diagnosed since last summer. WHO officials have not yet confirmed the latest deaths.

In February, a patient died in a hospital in Birmingham, England, after three members of the same family became infected. It is thought a family member had picked up the virus while travelling to the Middle East and Pakistan. Novel coronavirus is from the same family of viruses as the one that caused an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) that emerged in Asia in 2003. However, NCoV and Sars are distinct from each other, the WHO said in its statement on Sunday. Coronavirus is known to cause respiratory infections in both humans and animals. But it is not yet clear whether it is a mutation of an existing virus or an infection in animals that has made the jump to humans.

BBC News - WHO says new coronavirus may be passed person to person

See also:

2 new viruses could both spark global outbreaks
May 13,`13 -- Two respiratory viruses in different parts of the world have captured the attention of global health officials - a novel coronavirus in the Middle East and a new bird flu spreading in China.

Last week, the coronavirus related to SARS spread to France, where one patient who probably caught the disease in Dubai infected his hospital roommate. Officials are now trying to track down everyone who went on a tour group holiday to Dubai with the first patient as well as all contacts of the second patient. Since it was first spotted last year, the new coronavirus has infected 34 people, killing 18 of them. Nearly all had some connection to the Middle East.

The World Health Organization, however, says there is no reason to think the virus is restricted to the Middle East and has advised health officials worldwide to closely monitor any unusual respiratory cases. At the same time, a new bird flu strain, H7N9, has been infecting people in China since at least March, causing 32 deaths out of 131 known cases. WHO, which is closely monitoring the viruses, says both have the potential to cause a pandemic - a global epidemic - if they evolve into a form easily spread between people. Here's a crash course in what we know so far about them:

Q: How are humans getting infected by the new coronavirus?

A: Scientists don't exactly know. There is some suggestion the disease is jumping directly from animals like camels or goats to humans, but officials are also considering other sources, like a common environmental exposure. The new coronavirus is most closely related to a bat virus, but it's possible that bats are transmitting the disease via another source before humans catch it.

Q: Can the new coronavirus be spread from human to human?

A: In some circumstances, yes. There have been clusters of the disease in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Britain and now France, where the virus has spread from person-to-person. Most of those infected were in very close contact, such as people taking care of a sick family member or health workers treating patients. There is no evidence the virus is spreading easily between people and all cases of human-to-human transmission have been limited so far.

Q: How are people catching the bird flu H7N9?

 

[waltky]

Dat's why Uncle Ferd always wears a copper bracelet...

Copper can help prevent the spread of respiratory viruses
Nov. 10, 2015 - Coronavirus is rapidly inactivated when exposed to copper, as opposed to other surface materials where it can survive for days and infect people.

Coronavirus dies quickly when exposed to copper, unlike other surface materials such as glass, tile and stainless steel where it can survive for days, researchers at the University of Southampton found in a new study. Limiting the spread of respiratory viruses such as human coronavirus, or those that spread from animals such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, is difficult because of how infectious they are, researchers said. Cutting the time viruses can survive on surfaces would help.

Researchers inactivate human coronavirus on copper.​

The same researchers in the new study have shown in previous studies that copper can kill norovirus, influenza and MRSA, making the use of copper alloy in hospital and medical labs seem like a good idea. "Transmission of infectious diseases via contaminated surfaces is far more important than was originally thought, and this includes viruses that cause respiratory infections," Dr. Sarah Warnes, a Southampton researcher, said in a press release. "This is especially important when the infectious dose is low and just a few virus particles can initiate an infection."

Warnes and Professor Bill Keevil, chairman of Environmental Healthcare at the university, tested human coronavirus 229E, which is similar to SARS and MERS, on several surfaces. On most surfaces -- including ceramic, tile, glass, rubber and stainless steel -- 229E survived for at least five days, however was rapidly destroyed irreversibly on copper surfaces. "The rapid inactivation and irreversible destruction of the virus observed on copper and copper alloy surfaces suggests that the incorporation of copper alloy surfaces -- in conjunction with effective cleaning regimes and good clinical practice -- could help control transmission of these viruses," Keevil said. The study is published in mBio.

Copper can help prevent the spread of respiratory viruses