During the summer of 2012, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a hitherto unknown coronavirus (CoV) was isolated from the sputum of a patient with acute pneumonia and renal failure. The isolate was provisionally called human coronavirus Erasmus Medical Center (EMC). Shortly thereafter, in September 2012, the same type of virus, named human coronavirus England, was recovered from a patient with severe respiratory illness who had been transferred from the Gulf region of the Middle East to London, United Kingdom (GenBank accession no. KC164505.2).