A novel human coronavirus: Middle East respiratory syndrome human coronavirus

Geng, HeYuan; Tan, WenJie

On 11 September 2012, a Qatari man in his forties with severe respiratory illness was transferred from Qatar to a United Kingdom hospital and was admitted to the intensive care unit for progressive hypoxia and renal failure. Extensive diagnostic tests on upper and lower respiratory tract samples for a causative agent were negative. The pancoronavirus RT-PCR assay, however, yielded a correct band size (208 bp) that corresponded to the conserved RNA dependent RNA polymerase gene of coronavirus in lower respiratory tract specimens. Assays for detection of known human coronaviruses HCoV-OC43, -229E, -NL63, -HKU1 and SARS-CoV were negative [12] . A comparison of the PCR fragment sequence with the nucleotide sequence of HCoV-EMC isolated from case 1, showed that they shared 99% identity, indicating the same viral infection. Subsequently, the complete genome sequence of this virus was sequenced in London and called Betacoronavirus England 1 (GenBank accession number: KC164505) [13] .