SAUDI ARABIA: World Health Organisation (WHO) officials say new SARS-like virus can probably pass person-to-person

Record ID: 189192

  • Title: SAUDI ARABIA: World Health Organisation (WHO) officials say new SARS-like virus can probably pass person-to-person
  • Date: 12th May 2013
  • Summary: CLOSE OF HASHEM AL-SHEIKH, BROTHER OF HUSSEIN SHOWING MOBILE PHONE PICTURES OF HIS FATHER IN ICU
  • Embargoed: 27th May 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Saudi Arabia
  • Country: Saudi Arabia
  • Topics: General,Health,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA7BC1GKNOAC4B5WRVOB9ZQ3O3T
  • Story Text: World Health Organisation (WHO) officials said on Sunday (May 12) it seemed likely a new coronavirus that has killed at least 18 people in the Middle East and Europe could be passed between humans, but only after prolonged contact.
    A virus from the same family triggered the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that swept the world after emerging in Asia and killed 775 people in 2003.
    On Sunday French authorities announced that a second man had been diagnosed with the disease after sharing a hospital room with France's only other sufferer.
    WHO Assistant Director-General Keiji Fukuda told reporters in Saudi Arabia, the site of the largest cluster of infections, there was no evidence so far the virus was able to sustain "generalised transmission in communities" - a scenario that would raise the spectre of a pandemic.
    But he added: "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," he said.
    A public health expert who declined to be identified, said "close contact" meant being in the same small, enclosed space with an infected person for a prolonged period.
    The virus first emerged in the Gulf last year, but cases have also been recorded in Britain and France of people who had recently been in the Middle East. A total of 34 cases worldwide have been confirmed by blood tests so far.
    Saudi Deputy Health Minister for Public Health Ziad Memish said that, of 15 confirmed cases in the most recent outbreak, in al-Ahsa district of Eastern Province, nine had died, two more than previously reported.
    Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry said in a statement the country had had 24 confirmed cases since last summer, of whom 15 had died. Fukuda said he was not sure if the two newly reported Saudi deaths were included in the numbers confirmed by the WHO.
    Memish added that three suspected cases in Saudi Arabia were still under investigation, including previous negative results that were being re-examined.
    The first French patient was confirmed as suffering from the disease on Wednesday after travelling in the Gulf. The second patient was transferred to intensive care on Sunday after the two men shared a room in a hospital in Lille.
    Fukuda, part of a WHO team visiting Saudi Arabia to investigate the spread of the disease, said although no specific vaccine or medication was yet available for novel coronavirus, patients were responding to treatment.
    ``Several urgent actions are needed, the most important ones are the needs for countries both inside and outside of the region to increase their levels of awareness among all people but especially among staff working in the health systems,"
    he said.
    Fukuda said that as far as he knew all cases in the latest outbreak in al-Ahsa district were directly or indirectly linked to one hospital.
    He added that Saudi Arabian authorities had taken novel coronavirus very seriously and had initiated necessary health measures such as increased surveillance systems.
    In eastern Saudi Arabia on the third day after his father's death from a respiratory infection, Hussein al-Sheikh began to feel feverish.
    Shortly afterwards, says the 27-year-old Saudi, ``When the first time they told me I have Corona, the first thing I thought about it is I am going to die because I thought about my dad and I said, 'it is going to be the same case and I am going to lose my life'."
    Hussein, who had often visited his father's bedside in his last days, was admitted to intensive care in a hospital in Dhahran, in the Eastern Province oil heartland of Saudi Arabia.
    Then his brother, Abdullah, and later his sister, Hanan, fell ill, obtaining treatment in hospitals in the nearby oasis district of al-Ahsa.
    Their father Mohammed, it has since emerged, was probably a victim of what doctors believe was novel coronavirus, the new SARS-like disease that first emerged in the Gulf last year and has gone on to claim 18 lives, nine of them in the kingdom.
    There is international concern, because it was a virus from the same family of pathogens that triggered the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that swept the world after starting in Asia in 2003 and killed 775 people.
    Some of the deaths from the new virus were in Britain and France, including cases in which victims had recently travelled from the Middle East. A total of 34 cases worldwide have been confirmed by blood tests so far.
    ``After my dad passed away, the first one was me (infected) I felt really sick so I admitted in ICU, then after me my brother who got sick and now he still in ICU and hopefully he is going to get better, then my sister, she felt sick and they admitted her at the hospital and she got treatment there," said Hussein, a PhD student who studies in Canada. To avoid spreading infection, he wore a green face mask.
    World Health Organisation (WHO) experts this week visited Ahsa, a sleepy oasis of around a million people, to work with Saudi authorities in investigating the latest outbreak.
    Much of the attention has focused on the private al-Moosa General Hospital in Hofuf, Ahsa's main town, where many of those infected, including Mohammed al-Sheikh, were treated in the intensive care unit.
    Mohammed al-Sheikh, who suffered from diabetes and had been admitted to hospital with a high fever and low blood sugar never knew what had infected him. He lost consciousness two days before he died.
    ``He got something which we didn`t know about it (his dead father) and his condition was getting worse day by day until he passed away and nobody inform us what is wrong with him, only that he had chest infection and then everything went bad, his kidneys went quickly, they said (doctors) his kidney stopped now, then he passed away." Hussein said, referring to his father's death.
    In the wake of rumours about the extent of the virus in Ahsa last week, some families of people who were hospitalised said they had been asked by authorities not to speak to media.
    Separated from the big cities of Riyadh and Dammam by large stretches of desert, Ahsa is a pretty area famous for its date farms. Drive through its dusty villages and goats appear grazing beneath the palm fronds. Between the trees jut pale rocky outcrops carved by the elements into outlandish shapes.
    Hussein al-Sheikh said he believed his father contracted novel coronavirus in the hospital's intensive care unit and that he then caught it there himself during the hours he spent visiting his father in the days before he died on April 15.
    But Malek al-Moosa, the hospital's general manager, denied this suggestion and said he believed the patients were in fact exposed to a common source of the virus outside Moosa General Hospital.
    Of the four members of the Sheikh family who fell sick, only one, Abdullah al-Sheikh, 33, has so far been tested positive for novel coronavirus.
    Samples from Mohammed, Hussein and Hanan are still being tested but Moosa said it was likely that they also had the virus.
    A poster-sized portrait of Mohammed al-Sheikh, a 56-year-old former employee of the national oil company Saudi Aramco, is displayed in the Sheikh family's reception room, where three of his 10 children sat to describe what they call the "calamity" that has hit their family.
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