CDC, CYNTHIA GOLDSMITH, MAUREEN METCALFE AND AZAIBI TAMINDutch virologists who first identified a novel coronavirus isolated in Saudi Arabia that has killed 27 people and infected 49 have been accused of slowing research on the virus, ScienceInsider reported. But the research team, led by Ron Fouchier at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, argues that, despite pursuing a patent on the virus sequence and host receptor data, they have shared it freely.
Fouchier and colleagues identified the virus after Ali Zaki, an Egyptian doctor working in Saudi Arabia, sent it to him. Zaki claims that he only sent the virus out of the country after giving it to the Saudi Ministry of Health, which did not show interest in it. The Saudi Ministry of Health said they had not heard of the new virus and that Zaki, who has been fired from the hospital and is now in Egypt, acted inappropriately by sending it out of the country without permission.
Now, according to the AFP, Ziad Memish, Deputy Health Minister in Saudi Arabia, complained to diplomats at the World Health Assembly annual meeting in Geneva that the Erasmus MC researchers were obstructing research on the virus, called ...
