By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA |
Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:55pm EST
GENEVA (Reuters) – Two people who died in Jordan in Apr have been found to have been putrescent with a new pathogen from a same family as SARS that sparked a tellurian warning in September, a World Health Organization (WHO) pronounced on Friday.
The coronavirus, formerly different in humans, has now been reliable in a sum of 9 people in 3 countries in a Middle East region, including a Saudi who had serious strident respiratory illness final month, a United Nations group said.
But a dual deadly cases in Jordan, reliable in samples only retested by a WHO collaborating laboratory in Egypt, do not change WHO’s comment that a pathogen does not seem to widespread simply between people, if during all, orator Gregory Hartl said.
“These Jordan cases don’t change a risk comment during a moment. We haven’t seen any new pattern. These are aged cases,” Hartl told Reuters.
In a statement, a Geneva-based WHO said: “Two deadly cases in Jordan have been reported to WHO today, bringing a sum of laboratory-confirmed cases to nine.”
Initially, a samples had tested disastrous for famous coronaviruses and other respiratory viruses in April.
“As a novel coronavirus had not nonetheless been discovered, no specific tests for it were available,” a group said.
The new pathogen shares some of a symptoms of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, that emerged in China in 2002, widespread simply among people and killed around a tenth of a 8,000 people it putrescent worldwide.
“Based on stream information, it does not seem to broadcast simply between people, distinct a SARS virus,” WHO said.
The new pathogen can seem to be pneumonia and strident kidney disaster has occurred in 5 cases, a WHO said.
In all, 5 cases of a new virus, including 3 deaths have been reliable in Saudi Arabia, including 3 patients in one family, it said. Two cases have been reliable in Qatar, and both are recovering, while both cases in Jordan were fatal.
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The Jordan cases were among a sum of 12 cases of serious strident respiratory illness that erupted final Apr related to a sanatorium in Zarqa some 40 kilometers (24 miles) outward Amman, Hartl said. Most were health workers, he added.
“The couple is a hospital. It could be some environmental thing or human-to-human transmission,” he said.
“The categorical thing is a fact that even if it were human-to-human transmission, that we don’t know, it doesn’t seem to widespread really good or efficiently,” Hartl said.
The dual supposed “clusters” of cases, in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, lifted a probability of “limited human-to-human transmission”, or bearing to a common source, a WHO said.
“Ongoing review might or might not be means to heed between these possibilities,” it said, observant some viruses are transmitted within families though are not endemic adequate to means vast village outbreaks.
The WHO urged health authorities in a 194 member states to continue notice for a new pathogen and examine any surprising patterns.
“Testing for a new coronavirus of patients with unexplained pneumonias should be considered, generally in persons staying in or returning from a Arabian peninsula and adjacent countries,” it said.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Sophie Hares)