British experts have urged people not to panic after health officials said a potentially fatal Sars-like virus can transmit from human to human.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) made the comments after a French man developed the illness after sharing a hospital room with a patient suffering from novel coronavirus.
The infectious disease has killed at least 18 people globally, including two people in the UK.
Health officials in the UK have been advised to be vigilant for severe unexplained respiratory illness in anyone who has recently travelled in the Middle East, as well as any unexplained clusters of such illness.
Professor Peter Openshaw, director of the centre for respiratory infection at Imperial College London, said: "We are right to be concerned about the reporting of transmission from person to person, but there is absolutely no reason to panic.
"Human-to-human transmission has now been documented but this is not a great surprise and the virus seems relatively hard to transmit.
"The 'super-spreading' events, in which one person infects several dozen people at a time (as was seen with Sars coronavirus), do not seem to be happening with this coronavirus."
Professor John Watson, head of the respiratory diseases department at Public Health England, said: "There have been no new cases of novel coronavirus in the UK since February 2013 so the total remains at four."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article