A novel coronavirus that has killed more than half of the 38 people it is known to have infected appears capable of limited human-to-human spread, the World Health Organization said Sunday.
France reported a second case of the disease on Sunday. The patient, who is hospitalized in an isolation ward, probably caught the pneumonia-causing virus from an infected patient in a hospital room they shared in Valenciennes in late April, the Health Ministry and the WHO said Sunday.
The French cases have opened up a new front in an international effort to control the virus, which is related to the one that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) a decade ago. The majority of infections with the new virus have occurred in Saudi Arabia, where on Sunday the Ministry of Health reported 15 deaths from 24 confirmed cases since September. Several of the infections have been tied to health care centers.