The World Health Organization announced this week that a new
coronavirus had been found in a critically ill Qatari man who
was being treated in London as well as in a Saudi Arabian man
who died several months earlier. Genetic sequencing found the
viruses in the two men to be nearly identical. The two men might
have been infected directly by animals, however, and there was
no proof of human-to-human spread of the virus, WHO spokesman
Gregory Hartl said Thursday. "This is not SARS, it is a new
virus and very distinct from SARS," he said. "There are still a
lot of unanswered questions, so we cannot predict what might
happen." Hartl said WHO could not elaborate on the men's cases
until investigations by national authorities were finished. The
new coronavirus is from a family of viruses that cause the
common cold as well as SARS, the severe acute respiratory
syndrome that killed about 800 people, mostly in Asia in a 2003
epidemic. SARS jumped to people from civet cats and then mutated
into a form easily spread amo