DHAKA: After further testing, a report of a MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) case in Bangladesh four days ago appears to have been a false alarm, a World Health Organization (WHO) official revealed.

"It appears to be negative," WHO spokesman Glenn Thomas told CIDRAP News this afternoon, referring to confirmatory testing of a sample from the Bangladesh patient. He supplied no other details. The case would have been Bangladesh's first.

A top Bangladeshi health official reported the case on Jun 15, according to media stories. The patient is a 53-year-old Bangladeshi who lives in the United States and got sick after flying to his homeland on Jun 4, a trip that included a stop in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where dozens of MERS cases have occurred.

The health official had suggested that the man probably caught the virus on a plane or while at the Abu Dhabi airport. The news raised some concern because it suggested that the infection might have resulted from casual contact. So far, person-to-person spread of MERS-CoV has occurred mainly if not exclusively through close contact in families and healthcare settings.

At a WHO press briefing on MERS-CoV 2 days ago, Keiji Fukuda, MD, said the test results for the Bangladesh patient were unclear and that a sample had been sent to a reference lab in another country for confirmatory testing. Fukuda is the WHO's assistant secretary-general for health security and environment, reports cidrap.umn.edu.

When the Bangladesh official reported the case, he said the man was receiving intensive care in a Dhaka clinic.

BDST: 1348 HRS, JUN 21, 2014