Mediaboss Marketing

Global health officials are closely following a new respiratory virus related to SARS that is believed to have killed at least one person in Saudi Arabia and left another person in critical condition in Britain.

The germ is a coronavirus, from a family of viruses that cause the common cold as well as SARS, the severe acute respiratory syndrome that killed some 800 people, mostly in Asia, in a 2003 epidemic.

In the latest case, British officials alerted the World Health Organisation on Saturday (Sunday, NZT) of the new virus in a man who transferred from Qatar to be treated in London. He had recently travelled to Saudi Arabia and is now being treated in an intensive care unit after suffering kidney failure.

Health officials don't know yet whether the virus could spread as rapidly as SARS did or if it might kill as many people.

"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."

Hartl said it was unclear how the virus spreads. Coronaviruses are typically spread in the air but Hartl said scientists were considering the possibility that the patients were infected directly by animals.

He said there was no evidence yet of any human-to-human transmission.

"All possible avenues of infection are being explored right now," he said.

New Zealand's director of WHO national influenza centre, Dr Sue Huang, said she found out about the new virus yesterday.

The virus was "very new" and there were still several questions that needed to be answered.

Go here to read the rest:
Man struck down with new killer virus