Hunt for Saudi plane passengers

Coronavirus has claimed 6 lives worldwide London - Arabstoday Aeroplane passengers who sat near the first person in the UK to contract a new Sars-like virus are being tracked down and tested for the illness. The infected man, who travelled back to London at the end of January from Saudi Arabia, is being treated at a hospital in Manchester after passing the virus on to his son, who died in hospital last Sunday. The boy was suffering from a long-term condition which made him more susceptible to the illness.   The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has confirmed that it is now searching for passengers who sat in the same row or two rows in front or behind the man on the flight back from Saudi Arabia. The HPA said it had followed up more than 100 people who had close contact with cases in this family cluster. "Besides the identified secondary cases, all tests carried out on contacts to date have been negative for the novel coronavirus infection," said the organisation. Family and friends of the affected man are already in the process of being traced. A second relative of the affected man has also been diagnosed with a mild form of the illness but has since recovered. Four confirmed cases of the illness have so far been confirmed in Britain among 12 cases in the rest of the world. Of the 12, six have died – with just one death in the UK. The 39-year-old, who died in an intensive care unit in Birmingham, caught the illness from his father, who contracted the virus while travelling in Pakistan and the Middle East. The illness, known as novel coronavirus, causes a cough, breathing difficulties and fever which can lead to pneumonia and kidney failure. It is from the same virus family as Sars, which claimed 900 lives worldwide in 2002 and 2003. However, scientists say novel coronavirus is nowhere near as dangerous as it has difficulty spreading between humans. The illness reportedly spreads through bat droppings or water droplets from coughs and sneezes. Professor John Watson, head of the respiratory diseases department at the HPA, said: “This case [the person who died] is a family member who was in close personal contact with the earlier case and who may have been at greater risk of acquiring an infection because of their underlying health condition.” “To date, evidence of person-to-person transmission has been limited. Although this case provides strong evidence for person to person transmission, the risk of infection in most circumstances is still considered to be very low,” he added.