Recombinomics Commentary 16:15
March 23, 2013
The dad-of-two, in his 60s, of Winson Green, was being treated at Wythenshawe Hospital, in Manchester, and seemed to be improving.
But he took a turn for the worse and lost his battle on Tuesday.
His funeral was held at a mosque in Small Heath, on Wednesday and his body has now been taken to Pakistan for burial.
The above comments described the death of the index case for UK coronavirus cluster. He had been hospitalized since January 30. He was initially diagnosed as an H1N1pdm09 case, since he was PCR positive, but further testing based on a failure to respond to treatment, identified an nCoV and sequencing of a clinical sample confirmed the close similarity with nCoV sequences from the first two confirmed cases. His sequence (England2) was greater than 99.9% identical with the consensus sequence. A similar level of identity was also seen for the other nCoV case currently hospitalized in the UK (he has been hospitalized since October).
There are now 16 confirmed nCoV cases and 10 of the 15 known outcomes have been death. This high case fatality rate has led to comparisons between the nCoV with SARS-CoV from outbreaks between 2002/2004, which killed almost 10% of confirmed cases. Like SARS-CoV, the fatal cases frequently developed renal failure.
The sister and son of the UK index case were also nCoV confirmed. However, they were negative for H1N1pdm09, but positive for parainfluenza virus type 2 (HPIV-2) as were two additional contacts. Since the two family members with HPIV-2 had no contact with each other, and developed symptoms several days after the index case was hospitalized and intubated, it is likely that they were infected by another family member who was co-infected with nCoV and HPIV-2.
The media report citing travel to Mecca in Saudia Arabia by the daughter of the index case raise concerns that she was infected with nCoV and HPIV-2 and infected the family members in the UK.
