An infection by a coronavirus belonging to the same family of that responsible for the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) has been reported in the United Kingdom. A 49 years old man from Qatari with a travel history to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been admitted to an intensive care unit in Doha, Qatar, on 7 September, with symptoms of acute respiratory syndrome with renal failure. He has been transferred to the UK on 11 September, where the Health Protection Agency confirmed the presence of a novel coronavirus, whose sequence was 99.5% similar to that responsible of a previous fatal case reported earlier this year in a 60 year-old Saudi national.
Given that coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that can cause different kinds of diseases, from the common cold to the SARS, WHO is currently trying to gather further information about these two cases and did not recommended any travel restrictions.
A new coronavirus found in UK
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Close encounters of the third kind
di Ilaria Capua
In the globalised environment, the interconnection and interdependence of economies enable pathogens to spread in unprecedented ways and extents. Human to human transmission (close encounters of the first kind) occur with pathogens that are well adapted to the human host, and spread between countries and continents. In a similar way, pathogens spreading between animals (close encounters of the second kind) spread not only within a farm, but also between different farms, due to trade, or live animals or vector movement, in a transboundary manner.