Qatar reports first case of coronavirus

Qatar is the latest Gulf state to report a case of the coronavirus, with a 59-year-old infected, confirm authorities.

The patient, a Qatar national, is reportedly in stable condition.

The health authority in Qatar confirmed the case with AFP, saying this is the first such incidence of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome being reported in the country.

Another Qatari, died from the infection on June 28 in a London hospital.

Since April 2012, 94 laboratory-confirmed and 16 probable cases of human infection with the MERS coronavirus have been reported to the World Health Organisation.

The virus has killed 47 since September worldwide, 39 of them in Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, five cases of the virus have been detected in the UAE, according to the Health Authority of Abu Dhabi, with the index case being an 83-year-old UAE resident who died from the illness.

Four doctors treating the patient were also reported to have been infected; two of them developed a mild disease and the other two remained asymptomatic.

MERS is of the same family as the deadly SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine per cent of whom died.

Like SARS, it is thought to have jumped from animals to humans with bats and camels being looked upon as possible hosts of the virus.

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