On Sunday, a 28-year-old woman from Mansoura governorate was admitted to hospital in Egypt suffering from a severe lung infection.

The woman, Fatima Abdel-Fattah, had just arrived from Saudi Arabia, and doctors were initially concerned that she might be suffering from Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a deadly respiratory virus that appeared in Saudi Arabia last year.

Several Egyptian media outlets have claimed that Abdel-Fattah, who died on Tuesday, was suffering from MERS, but the claims were denied by an official report issued on Tuesday by the Ministry of Health in Egypt.

Dr Magi Hegazi, undersecretary at the Ministry of Health, stressed that blood tests confirmed that Abdel-Fattah was suffering from H1N1 rather than MERS.

MERS is a coronavirus, a family of viruses which includes SARS as well as viruses behind the common cold.

The origins of the new syndrome are unclear, although some theories point to the possibility of a virus mutation from animals to humans. Around half of the reported cases of the virus were fatal.

The Ministry of Health has said that Egypt remains free of any MERS cases to date.