Global health officials are closely monitoring a new respiratory
virus related to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that has left a
Qatari citizen in critical condition in a hospital in London.
The
UN's World Health Organisation (WHO) put out a global alert on Sunday
saying a new virus had infected the 49-year-old man who had recently
travelled to Saudi Arabia - where another man was killed by an almost
identical virus.
Britain's Health Protection Agency (HPA) and
respiratory disease experts said there was no immediate cause for
concern, although authorities were watching out for any signs of the
virus spreading.
The virus, known as a coronavirus, comes from
the same family as both the common cold and SARS, the syndrome that
killed 800 people in a 2003 epidemic.
The WHO said it was not recommending any travel restrictions at the moment but would seek further information on the virus.
Unknown threat
Health officials said they did not know yet whether the virus could spread as rapidly as SARS did, or if it would be as lethal.
"It's
still [in the] very early days," said Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman.
"At the moment, we have two sporadic cases and there are still a lot of
holes to be filled in."
Coronaviruses are typically spread in the
air, but Hartl said scientists were considering the option that the
patients were infected directly by animals as there was no evidence yet
of any human-to-human transmission.
No other countries have so
far reported any similar cases to WHO, he said, and so far there is no
connection between the two cases except for a history of travel in Saudi
Arabia.
Andrew Easton, a virologist at Britain's University of Warwick, told
the Reuters news agency that with only two cases so far, it was
difficult for experts to estimate the potential threat.
"The
important thing is to be aware of the virus and to be on the lookout for
any evidence that it is more than a rare chance event," he said.
Hugh Pennington, a professor of bacteriology at the University of
Aberdeen, told Al Jazeera that medicine had also advanced since the SARS
outbreak, and that technology would allow faster diagnosis.
"The lessons we’ve learned from SARS have been extremely useful," he
said. "We now have techniques which mean you can do a very rapid
fingerprinting of the RNA in somebody’s lungs if they’ve got a very
unusual pneumonia.”
Intensive care
The HPA and WHO said in statements that the Qatari national became
ill on September 3, after previously having travelled to Saudi Arabia.
He was transferred from Qatar to Britain on September 11 and is
undergoing treatment in an intensive care unit at a London hospital for
complications, including kidney failure.
The HPA said it had
conducted lab testing on the Qatari's case and found a 99.5 per cent
match to the virus that killed the 60-year-old Saudi national earlier
this year.
David Heymann, chairman of the HPA, said the new virus did not appear that similar to SARS.
"It
isn't as lethal as SARS and we don't know too much about its
transmissibility yet," he said. "If people are getting infected, they
aren't getting serious symptoms."
He added that none of the health workers involved in treating the Qatari patient had fallen ill.
Saudi
officials said they were concerned that the upcoming Hajj pilgrimage
next month, which brings millions of people to Saudi Arabia from all
over the world, could provide more opportunities for the virus to
spread.
