News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – World Health Organization (WHO) officials and others at the World Health Assembly (WHA) complained today that restrictions on the use of virus samples are delaying the investigation of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), according to news service reports.

(CIDRAP News) – Saudi Arabia has dedicated more labs to investigating novel coronavirus (nCoV) cases in the country, while the condition of an nCoV patient in France has worsened, according to news media reports today.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) said the growing number of clusters of novel coronavirus (nCoV) cases offers increasing evidence that the virus can spread between people in close contact, as France confirmed the infection in a patient who shared a hospital room with the country's first case-patient.

(CIDRAP News) – Following the recent retrospective confirmation of two fatal infections with a novel coronavirus (CoV) in Jordan, the Jordanian health ministry said no more such cases have surfaced in the country since April, according to media reports.

(CIDRAP News) – Reports of a novel coronavirus linked to two severe illnesses with Saudi Arabian connections put the public health world on alert yesterday and conjured up memories of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), a coronavirus infection that killed close to 800 people in 2002 and 2003.