GENEVA: Eleven people who had contact with the Philippines’ first confirmed case of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) are also showing symptoms, the WHO said on Friday.

“Eleven contacts are symptomatic. It’s a mix of family contacts and hospital contacts, the doctors and nurses who attended the case before she was tested and found positive,” said Peter Ben Embarek, a scientist at the WHO’s department of food safety and zoonoses.

The patient, a 32-year-old nurse, returned from Saudi Arabia on Feb. 1 and was hospitalized the next day. The Philippines Health Ministry said on Wednesday she had tested positive for the disease, which has been linked to camels.

“So far close to 100 of the 225 passengers have been identified and contacted,” said Embarek.

None of the nurse’s fellow travellers who have been traced has shown symptoms and the risk to them is small, but all passengers who have not yet been contacted should present themselves to health authorities, he said.

Health authorities are already monitoring 56 people considered to have had contact with the nurse.

“The closer you are to a case, of course, the higher the risk of transmission. Generally on a plane transmission is very rare because the air is recycled very quickly and people are not moving around much. Unless you are within a few rows of the case the risk is extremely low.”