Middle East, World Health Organization | featured news

A new virus from the same family as SARS which sparked a global alert in September has now killed two people in Saudi Arabia, and total cases there and in Qatar have reached six, the World Health Organisation said.

The World Health Organization said Monday it is too soon to say whether there could be an outbreak of a SARS-like killer respiratory disease after health officials in Britain announced they detected a related virus in a severely ill patient from the Middle East.

Cases of swine flu were confirmed early today in Israel and New Zealand, the first definitive proof that the dangerous new virus has spread to the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions, but international health officials said there was little point in imposing border or travel restrictions or otherwise trying to contain the virus.