News & Perspective

(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) – Experiments by Hong Kong researchers to gauge the susceptibility of several human and animal cell lines to novel coronavirus (NCoV) found signs that it can infect a broad range of tissues, which might shed light on the disease's seemingly high mortality rate.

Feb 25, 2012

(CIDRAP News) – A patient from Saudi Arabia died from a novel coronavirus (NCoV) infection, becoming the world's 13th case and seventh death, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – Experiments on the novel coronavirus that has infected patients from three Middle Eastern countries show that the receptor it uses to infect human cells is different from the one used by its relative the SARS virus and that it can infect cells from a range of animals, according to a study released today.

British health officials said today that a Rotterdam lab that first characterized the novel coronavirus linked recently to two severe illnesses hopes to publish the whole genome in the next 24 to 48 hours, and the UK's Health Protection Agency (HPA) launched guidance to help clinicians investigate and manage possible cases.

(CIDRAP News) – A European report has filled in some details about the two severe illnesses linked to a novel coronavirus, but most of the major questions, such as where it came from and how it spreads, remained unanswered today.