News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) says its recent investigation of illnesses associated with two confirmed novel coronavirus (CoV) infections in Jordan suggests that some cases can be relatively mild and that investigators are now more suspicious that the cluster involved person-to-person transmission.

(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.

(CIDRAP News) – The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) today announced an update of its risk assessment on novel coronavirus, which takes into account the possibility of human-to-human spread, the wider geographic area where infections occurred, and risks the virus may pose to healthcare workers.

(CIDRAP News) – Diagnostic tests for the novel coronavirus (CoV) that recently emerged in the Middle East are being deployed rapidly in Europe, and about 250 patients have already been tested for the virus, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

(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) – The World Health Organization (WHO) reported today that two cases of novel coronavirus (CoV) infection occurred as part of a cluster of hospital respiratory infections in Jordan back in April. Besides adding one more to the list of affected countries, the announcement signaled that the virus emerged 2 months earlier than previously thought and increased the likelihood that it can spread from person to person.

(CIDRAP News) – A third case in a family cluster of novel coronavirus infections has been confirmed, raising the global case count to seven, and the fourth illness in the family is now listed as a probable case, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced.

(CIDRAP News) – The reporting of four more novel coronavirus infections in recent weeks, raising the total to six, has prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to suggest that governments consider a major escalation of testing for the virus, a potentially burdensome undertaking.