By Ewan Palmer
A respiratory illness similar to the Sars Virus which killed hundreds of people has been detected in a man at a London hospital who recently travelled to the Middle East.
The 49-year-old man from Qatar became ill after traveling to Saudi Arabia where another man died of a similar illness earlier this year, the Health Protection Agency (HPA) and World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed.
The man in the new case was sickened by a coronavirus, which causes most common colds but also causes Sars, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.
He was transferred from Qatar to Britain on 11 September and is being treated in an intensive care unit at a London hospital for problems including kidney failure. The UN health agency says virus samples from the patient are almost identical to those of a 60-year-old Saudi national who died earlier this year.
Michael Osterholm, a flu expert at the University of Minnesota said: "You don't die from the common cold. This gives us reason to think it might be more like Sars."
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http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/387360/20120924/sars-virus-britain-qatar-saudi-arabia-hpa.htm
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