Disease

New Sars-Like Virus Infects British Patient

A new virus from the same family as SARS that sparked a global alert last September has been found in another patient in Britain, health officials said on Monday.

The latest case of infection with the new virus known as a coronavirus brings the total number confirmed globally to 10, of whom five have died.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the latest infection was "a sporadic case" and did not alter the WHO's risk assessment. It added, however, that the new case "does indicate that the virus is persistent".

The British patient, who recently had travelled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, is receiving intensive care treatment in hospital in the city of Manchester, northern England.

The new virus, which the WHO refers to as novel coronavirus or NCoV, shares some of the symptoms of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - a coronavirus which emerged in China in 2002 and killed about a tenth of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.