LILLE/DUBAI: A nurse in a hospital that held France’s only confirmed case of the Sars-like coronavirus that has killed 18 people has been admitted to hospital in northern France on suspicion on being infected herself, French health officials said yesterday.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the number of cases confirmed worldwide to 33. There is no evidence so far of sustained human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus. But health experts are concerned about clusters of new possible cases of nCoV, which started in the Gulf and spread to France, Britain and Germany.
Two people who had contact with the confirmed French case, a 65-year-old man who fell ill on returning from Dubai, were admitted to hospital on Thursday.
One was a patient who shared a ward with him when he was in a hospital in the town of Valenciennes, northern France, at the end of April, and the other is a doctor who treated him there.
The 65-year-old, who is in stable but serious condition, was transferred to an isolated intensive care wing in Douai near Lille, which is where the third case appeared. He was transferred to Lille on Thursday night.
“We identified it overnight. It corresponds to the investigations we’ve been undertaking since our confirmed case of the coronavirus,” said Sandrine Kueny, deputy director of the regional health agency. The nurse worked in the hospital’s infectious disease unit but it was unclear whether she had direct contact with the sick man.
The coronavirus is from the same viral family that triggered the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) that swept the world after starting in Asia in late 2003 and killed 775 people.
French authorities advise that anyone who has recently travelled to the Gulf region consult a doctor in case of fever.
Reuters
