Via Spiegel Online: Patient with coronavirus treated in Essen Clinic. Excerpt from a Google translation, with my editing, so don't take this as absolutely accurate:
Health authorities are tense: A man from Qatar had been infected with the novel coronavirus that causes SARS-like symptoms. But doctors at the University Hospital Essen have treated the patient for four weeks, with no idea that he was suffering from a dangerous pathogen.
When the man from Qatar was admitted to the Ruhrlandklinik Lung Centre at the Universityof Essen, he had already been sick for 19daysm and the doctors in Qatar could no longer treat him because his lung tissue was severely damaged. Only one treatment at a specialist clinic was available, so he was flown to Germany.
The Qatari doctors had not told their German colleagues about their suspicions, that the patient might be infected with the new coronavirus. The virus had first been detected in September in another patient from Qatar who was treated in London for acute lung and kidney failure. As it turned out, a Saudi citizen, previously in the Netherlands, had died of this pathogen.
There was no association between the two cases. However, the authorities were alerted immediately. In 2003, another coronavirus had spread like wildfire around the world—the agent of the lung disease SARS. Before it disappeared, it had claimed more than 700 victims.
Doctors in Qatar had therefore sent a sample of body fluids to London for analysis at the Health Protection Agency, which is currently doing regular tests for the new coronavirus on samples from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. In fact, the result was positive. But the doctors in the Ruhrlandklinik learned this only on Thursday from the Robert Koch Institute. The patient is back in Qatar, largely recovered, and one day previously was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital.
