New coronavirus-update) Two isolated in Denmark below five
(12 mins ago)
Two of the five persons showing symptoms of infection from a new coronavirus, are under five years old, a Denmark hospital said today. All of them are Danish residents and have been isolated.
Chief physician Svend Stenvang Petersen of Odense University Hospital told AFP that test results are expected in the afternoon, local time.
“The five have a fever, coughing and influenza-like symptoms,'' he said.
Petersen said those admitted were a family of four. The father had been to Saudi Arabia, while and an unrelated person had been to Qatar. Two of those with symptoms were under the age of five.
“We have put them in isolation because we don't know how the virus spreads. So just as with bird and swine flu we have admitted them and isolated them so that we prevent the spread to others,'' Petersen said. “We do not have any medicine that works against this virus.’’
Corona viruses are a large family of viruses including those which cause the common cold, as well as severe acute respiratory syndrome, an outbreak of which killed some 800 people in 2003.
The new corona virus is thought to have an incubation period lasting seven to 10 days, and has previously been found among patients who had traveled from Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Earlier, Xinhua reported that the hospital director Jens Peter Steensen told Danish media that the five patients, who are all Danish residents, will be tested for the new corona virus and for a range of more common triggers of respiratory infection.
On Monday, the Danish Health and Medicines Authority advised persons who had traveled to Qatar or Saudi Arabia to seek medical advice if they experienced fever, cough or difficulty breathing within ten days of their return from these countries.
It followed a warning from British health officials who alerted the World Health Organization on Saturday of the new virus found in a man transferred from Qatar to the UK on September 11.
The 49-year-old man, who is being treated in an intensive care unit at a London hospital for problems including kidney failure, had recently traveled to Saudi Arabia, where another man with an almost identical virus, had already died. http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking_news_detail.asp?id=25575&icid=4&d_str=
