PARIS: A patient suspected of having contracted the MERS coronavirus has tested negative for the lethal respiratory disease, France’s health ministry has announced.
The ministry had initially said on Tuesday that a person who had just returned from Saudi Arabia, where the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) first appeared in September 2012, was likely infected by the virus.
But in-depth tests on the 43-year-old patient revealed that they had not been infected.
“The two cases identified in May 2013 are therefore the only two confirmed cases in France so far,” it said in a statement.
Of these two cases, one patient fell ill when he came back from a trip to Dubai and later died on May 28. He is believed to have infected the other person, who is still hospitalised in the northern city of Lille but no longer carries the virus. AFP
