WHO experts to visit Saudi hospital where coronavirus spread

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  A electron microscope image of a coronavirus is seen in this undated picture provided by the Health Protection Agency in London.Reuters

World Health Organization (WHO) experts and local officials will visit a Saudi hospital where the SARS-like coronavirus has spread, killing seven people, the U.N. agency said on Wednesday.

France reported its first case on Wednesday in a 65-year-old Frenchman who had recently returned from Dubai with the virus that has emerged from the Gulf and has also spread to Britain and Germany as well as Jordan, Qatar and United Arab Emirates.

The French case brings total known infections worldwide to 31, of which 18 have died.

The Saudi patients appeared to have been infected in hospital with some family members also falling ill, WHO officials said.

Coronavirus is from the same viral family as triggered the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that swept the world from Asia in late 2003, killing 775 people.

Health experts' concerns are growing over clusters of cases, despite no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission - the type of infection pathway that can lead to pandemics.

The WHO-Saudi team of experts will focus on the Al-Moosa hospital in the town of Hofuf in Ahsa governate in Eastern Province, where the patients are being treated. Official statements released via the Saudi Press Agency have sought to reassure Saudis the outbreak is limited.

"One focal point of the investigation at the moment is the hemodialysis unit in the hospital," said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl in Geneva, referring to equipment used on kidney and diabetes patients.

"The association of this outbreak with a single health care facility suggests nosocomial (hospital-acquired) transmission," it said, noting that some patients under treatment for ailments may have had increased susceptibility to infection.

"However, the presence of infection in two family members not associated with the facility itself raises a concern about potential broader transmission in the community," it said.

Saudi Arabia's Health Ministry spokesman did not respond to repeated phone calls seeking comment, while the director at Al-Moussa declined to comment. International media were not invited to a news conference with Health Ministry officials on Monday.

Statements on official media outlets were aimed at dispelling online speculation in Saudi Arabia that the virus had spread to other hospitals in Eastern Province.

A total of 23 cases have been reported since September in Saudi Arabia, including 13 since mid-April in al-Ahsa, where seven patients have died and four remain critically ill in intensive care, with two improving in hospital, the WHO said.

SPREADING TO EUROPE

Along with the French case, the WHO has registered 23 cases in Saudi Arabia, two in Jordan, two in Qatar, one in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and two in Britain.

France's Health Minister Marisol Touraine said the man, now on a respirator in an intensive care ward, was admitted to hospital with breathing problems and a fever on April 23, a few days after his return from a week-long trip to Dubai.

"This is an imported case and it's a unique case," Touraine told a news conference, promising a thorough investigation into how the man had become infected.

Tests were now being carried out as a precaution on all friends and relatives who had been in contact with him, but all have come up negative so far, officials said.

"He is in a critical condition. His situation is worrying," the government's health director Jean-Yves Grall told the news conference. The man, who is from the northern Nord Pas de Calais region, has needed blood transfusions, he said.

The most recent German case was in March. The man fell ill in UAE and went to Germany for treatment where he died. The previous case, in November, was a man who was infected in Qatar, treated in Germany and then discharged from hospital.

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Scientists find how deadly new coronavirus infects human cells

Scientists have worked out how a deadly new virus which was unknown in humans until last year is able to infect human cells and cause severe, potentially fatal damage to the lungs.

In one of the first detailed studies of the virus - which emerged in the Middle East and has so far infected 15 people worldwide, killing nine of them - Dutch researchers identified a cell surface protein it uses to enter and infect human cells.

The finding, published in the journal Nature, came as the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the 15th case of the virus, known as novel coronavirus or NCoV, in a male patient in Saudi Arabia who died on March 2.

Other cases have been in Jordan and Qatar, and in patients in Germany and Britain linked to travel in the Middle East.

NCoV is from the same family of viruses as those that cause common colds and the one that caused the deadly outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that first emerged in Asia in 2003.

The WHO first issued an international alert about it in September after it was identified in a Qatari man in Britain who had recently been in Saudi Arabia.

A study published last month found that NCoV was well adapted to infecting human cells and may be treatable with medicines similar to the ones used for SARS, which killed a tenth of the 8,000 people it infected.

In this latest study, led by Bart Haagmans at the Erasmus Medical Center in The Netherlands, researchers set out to find how the virus got into cells - which receptors it used - and then to find out where in the body those receptors were common.

Potential vaccines

"Once you can identify the receptor and you know the distribution of the receptor in the body, then you can get more information on the pathogenesis (the way it infects people) of the virus and the possibility for transmission," Haagmans said in a telephone interview.

Researchers identified the key receptor for the disease as a cell surface protein called dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP4).

They also found cells containing DPP4 receptors were common in the lower respiratory tract but not in the upper respiratory tract - giving clues to why the virus causes illness in the lungs rather than in the nose and throat as a cold virus would.

The findings should help researchers find ways of developing potential drugs or vaccines to block the DPP4 receptors and prevent infection, Haagmans said.

A few drugs that block DPP4 receptors are already on the market, licensed for use in diabetes, but Haagmans said his team already tried using those to stop the virus in laboratory tests and found they did not work.

He said, however, that the team was working with other molecules that might block the receptors and could form the basis for developing a potential vaccine.

Initial analysis by scientists at Britain's Health Protection Agency last year found that NCoV's closest relatives were most probably bat viruses.

Yet further work by a research team in Germany suggests NCoV may have come through an intermediary - possibly goats.

Haagmans said since DPP4 receptors were also present in other species, including bats, his findings showed it was feasible the virus came from bats. He said the idea that goats may have been an intermediary also looked feasible.

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