NEW YORK — Health officials have confirmed a second U.S. case of a mysterious virus that has sickened hundreds in the Middle East.

The latest case is not an American – he is a resident of Saudi Arabia, visiting Florida, who is now in an Orlando hospital.

He was diagnosed with MERS, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Sunday night. It is a respiratory illness that begins with flu-like fever and cough but can lead to shortness of breath, pneumonia and death.

Fortunately, the U.S. cases so far have not been severe. The first case, a man in Indiana, was released from a hospital late last week. And the second patient is doing well, officials said. The two cases are not linked, officials said.

“The risk to the public remains very low,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most cases have been in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere in the Middle East. But earlier this month, a first U.S. case was diagnosed in a man who traveled from Saudi Arabia to Indiana.

That man, an American, was a health-care worker at a hospital in Saudi Arabia’s capital city who flew to the United States on April 24 on a plane that originated in Riyadh, stopped in London and then landed in Chicago. He went to a hospital on April 28.