MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

India Times – “LONDON: The World Health Organization said on Monday it is too soon to say whether there could be an outbreak of a SARS-like killer respiratory disease after health officials in Britain announced they detected a related virus in a severely ill patient from the Middle East.

British officials alerted WHO on Saturday of the new virus in a man transferred from Qatar for treatment in London. He had recently travelled to Saudi Arabia, where another man died of a similar illness earlier this year.

The man in the new case was sickened by a coronavirus , from a family of viruses which causes most common colds but also includes the virus that causes SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome . In 2003, SARS killed some 800 people, mostly in Asia, in a brief epidemic.

‘It’s still very early days,’ said Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman. ‘At the moment we have two sporadic cases and there are still a lot of holes to be filled in.’ Hartl said it was unclear how the virus is spread and there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. for a history of travel in Saudi Arabia. SARS was first spread to humans from civet cats in China. Hartl said no country has so far reported any similar cases to WHO.

Other experts said it was unclear how dangerous the virus is. ‘We don’t know if this is going to turn into another SARS or if it will disappear into nothing,’ said Michael Osterholm, a flu expert at the University of Minnesota . He said it was crucial to determine the ratio of severe to mild cases.

SARS hit over 30 countries worldwide after spreading” Read more.