A Qatari male, with travel history to Saudi Arabia, has been admitted to a British hospital with a case of acute respiratory syndrome with renal failure.
The case was reported to WHO by the British government on Saturday.
The healthy, 49-year-old man was admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) in the Qatari capital Doha on September 7. On September 11, he was transferred to Britain by air ambulance from Qatar. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) of the UK conducted laboratory testing and has confirmed the presence of a novel corona-virus, WHO said in a press release.
The HPA has compared the sequencing of the virus isolate from the Qatari national with that of a virus sequenced previously by the Erasmus University Medical Center, Netherlands. This was obtained from lung tissue of a fatal case earlier this year in a 60-year-old Saudi national. This comparison indicated 99.5 percent identity, with one nucleotide mismatch over the regions compared.
Corona-viruses are a large family of viruses which includes viruses that cause the common cold and SARS. Given that this is a novel corona-virus, WHO is currently in the process of obtaining further information to determine the public health implications of these two confirmed cases.
However, WHO has made it clear that it does not recommend any travel restrictions to Saudi Arabia with respect to these findings.
For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com
Political News
June 12, 2026 17:14 ET Major central bank action was the focus this week in economic news. The European Central Bank became the first major central bank to move in response to the rising inflationary pressures in the backdrop of the conflict in the Middle East. In North America, the U.S. inflation and trade data as well as Canada’s central bank decision gained attention. The Chinese trade data was the main news in Asia.