"The patient ... is recovering from a mild respiratory illness and is currently well," it said in a statement.
John Watson, the HPA's head of respiratory diseases said that despite this, the HPA was advising the patient to self-isolate and limit contact with other people. Health officials are currently following up other household members.
Coronaviruses are typically spread like other respiratory infections such as flu, travelling in airborne droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
"We would like to emphasise that the risk associated with novel coronavirus to the general UK population remains very low," Watson said.
When a second case in this cluster was found on Wednesday, Tom Wilkinson, a senior lecturer in respiratory medicine at Britain's University of Southampton, said that if NCoV turned out to be like the previous SARS outbreak, it may prove quite slow to spread from one human to another.
"But it's early days to make any definite statements because viruses can change and mutate very rapidly, so what is right today may be wrong tomorrow," he said.
Among the 12 laboratory-confirmed cases of NCoV to date, five are in Saudi Arabia, with three deaths; two are in Jordan, where both patients died; four are in Britain, where three are receiving treatment and the latest one is described as well; and one was in Germany in a patient from Qatar who has since been discharged from medical care.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/0...medium=twitter
