France's health ministry on Wednesday reported the country's first case of a new Sars-like virus that has so far killed 18 people, mostly in Saudi Arabia. A 65-year-old man who came back to France from a holiday in Dubai was diagnosed with the deadly novel coronavirus, and is in intensive care in a hospital in the northern city of Douai, the ministry said.
"This is the first and only confirmed case in France to date," it added. The unnamed patient, who was in Dubai from April 9 to 17, has been placed in isolation and is being given respiratory assistance and blood transfusions. He is due to be transferred to a hospital in the bigger city of Lille, "as we have to put in place very specific measures to enable him to breathe," said Patrick Goldstein, in charge of emergency services in the region. The virus, known as nCoV-EMC, is a cousin of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars), which triggered a scare 10 years ago when it erupted in east Asia, leaping to humans from animal hosts and killing some 800 people.