A British couple who died on holiday at a hotel in Egypt may have suffered the effects of an infectious biological agent or toxic chemicals, a coroner’s court has heard.
John Cooper, 69, and his wife Susan, 63, died suddenly on August 21 after becoming ill while staying at the Steigenberger Aqua Magic Hotel in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada.
Dr Nick Gent, a senior medical advisor at Public Health England, suggested neither radiation, natural causes, carbon monoxide poisoning nor food poisoning caused the couple’s deaths.
While the cause of death is still unknown, Dr Gent’s view pointed towards the cause of death most likely to be exposure to “infectious biological agent or toxic chemicals”.
But the pre-inquest hearing at Preston Coroner’s Court heard the British authorities still has not received all the necessary medical and other reports from the Egyptian authorities to definitively establish the cause of death.
This was despite 13 requests, over six months, including from the UK Ambassador to Egypt for the evidence so the coroner can establish what happened and what caused the deaths.
Kelly Ormerod, the couple’s daughter who was on holiday with her parents and her own daughter at the time of the deaths, tearfully criticised the “lack of co-operation” by the Egyptian authorities. She has maintained there was “something suspicious” about their deaths.
Shortly after the tragedy, she told the BBC: “When they went back to that room that evening, there was something in that room that’s actually killed them. Whether they’ve inhaled something that’s poisoned them, I don’t know. I can only have my opinion of what’s gone on, but there’s something’s that happened in that room that killed my parents.”
On Wednesday she said “no compassion or humanity” has been shown to the family.
A further pre-inquest hearing will be held later this year.