A SARS-like virus, coronavirus, claimed another life after a man diagnosed with the illness died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England on Sunday, BBC reports.
Twelve people have been diagnosed with the coronavirus, while six have died as a result of it so far.
The virus has shown signs of spreading among humans, but the overall threat to the general population is classified as low.
"The risk of infection in contacts in most circumstances is still considered to be low and the risk associated with novel coronavirus to the general UK population remains very low," said John Watson, head of the respiratory diseases department at the Health Protection Agency.
Three family members of the man who just died are also infected with the virus. And there is another infection reported in the UK from a patient who just traveled from Qatar to seek treatment.
And there is some speculation that one of the family members contracted the virus after traveling to the Middle East and Pakistan and then spread the illness to his son who died from the infection.
"The three recent cases in the UK represent an important opportunity to obtain more information about the characteristics of this infection in humans and risk factors for its acquisition, particularly in the light of the first ever recorded instance of apparently lower severity of illness in one of the cases," Watson said.
The source of the mysterious virus has yet to be determined, but a common theory is that it came from animals and that it appears to be related to a virus found in bats.
"The routes of transmission to humans of the novel coronavirus have not yet been fully determined, but the recent UK experience provides strong evidence of human-to-human transmission in at least some circumstances," Watson said.
The infection has been found to cause pneumonia and kidney failure in some cases.
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