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FRANCE’S FIRST VICTIM of a SARS-like virus which the 65-year-old man is thought to have contracted in Dubai, has died, health officials said today.
“The first patient is dead,” a spokesman with the Directorate General for Health said, referring to the man who was hospitalised on April 23.
Another man, who shared a hospital room with him for three days, was later found to have the nCoV-EMC virus, which is a cousin of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that sparked a health scare around the world in 2003.
The other man, who is in his 50s, has been in hospital in the northern city of Lille since May 9.
The new virus has killed 19 people. Like SARS, it appears to cause an infection deep in the lungs, with patients suffering from a temperature, cough and breathing difficulty, but it differs from SARS in that it also causes rapid kidney failure.
There have been 44 laboratory confirmed cases worldwide of the virus, which until now has been known as the novel coronavirus, or nCoV-EMC, but was redubbed the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS.
Saudi Arabia counts by far the most cases, with 30 confirmed infections and 17 fatalities, while cases have also been detected in Jordan, Qatar, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Britain and France.
Scientists at the Erasmus medical centre in Rotterdam have determined that the virus appears to infect the body via a docking point in lung cells, suggesting bats may be a natural reservoir for it.
Bats were also pinpointed as a likely natural reservoir for SARS in a 2005 study, and are known carriers of the deadly haemorrhagic fever Ebola.
The WHO said Friday that much uncertainty remained surrounding MERS, stressing that it aimed to work closely with Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and perhaps other Middle Eastern countries to determine how great the risk is.
- © AFP 2013.
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Buffy the Voltarol Slayer more like! Some things are well left be!
She is decent in the new Dexter.
I adored Buffy, still do to be honest. A reboot would be very difficult to achieve, not least because Whedon isn’t going to be involved (nor should he be).
If it happens, I’ll watch but no way it will ever be as good as the first series. Which still (mostly) still stands up.
Nobody has any new ideas anymore.
@Tezmond McVicar: Ideas for what? Viewing figures, franchises, revenue etc?
@Tezmond McVicar: Yeah Vampires were such a new idea in the 1990s
@FoxyBoiiYT: I loved ” The Originals”…..All vampire related but much more recent
Is that scooter ?
It will flop, a remade knight rider might work, it’s one of few programs you could use all todays modern technologies.
@P. V. Aglue: Naah… Knight Rider was cool because we *didn’t* have today’s technologies!
@P. V. Aglue: Knight Rider was updated, it was dire.
@P. V. Aglue: Knight rider was remade, It was so bad. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1213404/
have your say