ROME: Italy’s health ministry has confirmed the country’s first case of a new respiratory virus that is alarming global health officials.

The patient is a 45-year-old man recently back from a 40-day visit to Jordan. The ministry says he was in good condition and being treated on Saturday for the coronavirus in a hospital in Tuscany.

A resident of Italy with foreign nationality, the man recently spent 40 days in Jordan where one of his sons was suffering from an unspecified flu.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says it has been informed of 51 confirmed cases of the new virus since September. The WHO has called it the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV).

Thirty of those cases were fatal, including that of a Frenchman who died earlier in the week.

Saudi Arabia has been the most affected by the virus, with 39 cases and 25 deaths so far, according to data from the UN health agency.

Cases in Britain and Germany also have been reported. Most of those infected had traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Pakistan.

The virus, which can cause coughing, fever and pneumonia, has spread from the Gulf to France, Britain and Germany. The WHO has called it the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV).

It is from the same viral family that triggered the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that swept the world in late 2003 and killed 775 people.