Summary
- The number of people infected by coronavirus in China has risen to 830 with 26 having died.
- Wuhan, the Chinese centre of the outbreak, has begun building a 1,000-bed hospital scheduled to be completed in just six days to treat victims of the epidemic amid concerns about shortages of beds and equipment.
- Wuhan has been eerily quiet despite the impending lunar new year after the city was effectively placed in quarantine.
- Tests on 14 people in the UK have come back negative but checks are being carried out on others. After the Cobra emergency committee met to discuss the threat to the UK, the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, stressed that the risk to the public is low. Public Health England echoed the assessment while saying it was likely cases would emerge in the UK.
- The second confirmed case has been identified in the US, in the city of Chicago. The patient, a woman in her 60s had returned from Wuhan on 13 January and was tested after exhibiting symptoms. She is said to be in a stable condition. She has had limited contact with others since returning to the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but people she has had contact with are being monitored.
- There have been calls for a worldwide ban on wild animal markets by experts who says the sale of sometimes endangered species for human consumption is the cause both of the new coronavirus outbreak and other past epidemics. The Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, which has been closed down as the source of the infection, had a wild animal section, where live and slaughtered species were on sale.
The Scottish government confirmed on Friday afternoon that results for two of the five patients in Scotland tested for coronavirus had come back negative.
Emphasising that the risk to the public remained low, Scotland’s chief medical officer, Catherine Calderwood, said:
Scotland is well prepared for these types of outbreaks – we have a proven track record of dealing with challenging health issues and the UK was one of the first countries in the world to develop a test for the new virus.
I am being kept fully informed about the precautionary steps being taken, including timely updates on the patients who are currently being tested.
Updated
Three more cases have been confirmed in Hong Kong, according to AFP’s correspondent there.
#BREAKING Three more confirmed cases of #nCoV2019 in HK, bringing the total to five. pic.twitter.com/pOjwcjnlbi
— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) January 24, 2020
Here are some details of what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is saying about the second case of coronavirus identified in the United States.
The patient returned to the US from Wuhan on 13 January 2020, and called a healthcare provider after experiencing symptoms a few days later. The patient was admitted to a hospital, where infection control measures were taken to reduce the risk of transmission to other individuals. The patient remains hospitalised in an isolation room in stable condition and is doing well.
Based on the patient’s travel history and symptoms, healthcare professionals suspected 2019-nCoV. A clinical specimen was collected and sent to CDC, where laboratory testing confirmed the infection. The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) are investigating locations where this patient went after returning to Illinois and are identifying any close contacts who were possibly exposed.
The patient has limited close contacts, all of whom are currently well and who will be monitored for symptoms. Since returning from China, the patient has had very limited movement outside the home.
The CDC added that while it considered coronavirus “a serious public health threat” the immediate health risk to the US public was considered low.
Updated
The BMJ (British Medical Journal) has an article about the psychological effects of quarantining a city, in response to the lockdown affecting more than 20 million people in China.
It says:
While history reminds us that outright panic is unlikely, fear seems more certain as a consequence of mass quarantine. Anxiety within Wuhan is to be expected even without quarantine. During disease outbreaks, community anxiety can rise following the first death, increased media reporting and an escalating number of new cases. Mass quarantine is likely to raise that substantially, for multiple reasons.
It says elevated anxiety may lead to a surge in patients referred to as the “worried well” and that stigma may affect those on the inside of the cordon.
Previous incidents have seen residents of affected areas socially shunned, discriminated against in the workplace and their property attacked. Unless active steps are taken to prevent this, the official imposition of a cordon may aggravate such effects. Vigilante-imposed isolation can follow or even run ahead of official quarantine.
A crucial question for how the outbreak will unfold is how contagious the virus is. Scientists around the world are trying to establish how many people, on average, each infected person will pass the virus on to, a number known as R0 in epidemiology. If this number is more than one, an epidemic will grow and if less than one it will fizzle out.
An analysis posted online on Friday by scientists from Lancaster University puts R0 for the new coronavirus at 3.8 and estimates that should the epidemic continue unabated, there could be 191,529 infections by 4 February.
The paper also suggests that travel restrictions from and to Wuhan city are unlikely to be effective in halting transmission across China. The analysis assumes that only 5% of infections in Wuhan have been identified, which would imply a far larger pool of people whose symptoms have been mild and who have not attended hospital. So while more people may have been infected than initially thought, on the positive side, it would imply that the majority of infections do not cause severe symptoms.
Updated
Chinese state television’s traditional lunar new year extravaganza on Friday paid tribute to the people of Wuhan and to medical staff fighting the coronavirus crisis, urging them on to victory in the battle to defeat the outbreak, Reuters reports.
Traditionally, hundreds of millions of people gather around their televisions to watch the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, a more-than-four-hour showcase of skits, music and dance that has been a TV staple since the first edition was broadcast in 1983.
This year an extra segment was added at the last minute to what is normally a carefully planned show, slotted in early in the broadcast. The hosts offered their best wishes to medical staff on the frontlines and to the people of Wuhan. “We will definitely be victorious!” the hosts announced in unison.
After a montage showing doctors and nurses in their hospitals donning protective gear and hard at work looking after their patients, the hosts read out further exhortations.
Bai Yansong, one of state television’s best-known anchors, told the gala the virus segment had been prepared very shortly before the actual show.
“Remember that we love you, not just today but every day in the future,” Bai said as the camera cut to an audience member with tears streaming down her face.
Bai’s colleague Kang Hui, who often reads the main evening news, said the whole nation was involved in the virus fight. “There is no predicament we cannot get over,” Kang said, to stirring music against a backdrop of more scenes of medical workers in protective body suits.
Updated
Here is the full statement by the chief medical officer for England, Prof Chris Whitty, in which he said the risk to the UK public remained low:
COBR (Cobra) met today to discuss the situation in Wuhan, China, and elsewhere in Asia. I updated on the current situation, the preparedness of the NHS, and possible next steps.
I am working closely with the other UK chief medical officers. We all agree that the risk to the UK public remains low, but there may well be cases in the UK at some stage. We have tried and tested measures in place to respond. The UK is well prepared for these types of incidents, with excellent readiness against infectious diseases.
We have global experts monitoring the situation around the clock and have a strong track record of managing new forms of infectious disease. The UK has access to some of the best infectious disease and public health experts in the world.
There are no confirmed cases in the UK to date. We have been carefully monitoring the situation in Wuhan, China, since the beginning of the outbreak and are now implementing our planned response.
A public health hub will be set up in Heathrow from today. This consists of clinicians and other public health officials, in addition to existing port health measures.
The World Health Organization has rightly responded quickly and China has introduced strong public health measures.
This interactive shows where there are confirmed cases of the coronavirus:
And this shows the extent of the transport shutdown in China:
Updated
The person who tested positive in the US, the second person there to do so, is a woman in her 60s.
She returned from Wuhan, China, on 13 January.
Updated
14 people in UK test negative
In the UK, tests for coronavirus on 14 people in the UK have come back negative but there are checks ongoing on other people, the chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, has said.
He was speaking after a meeting of the government’s Cobra emergency committee in Whitehall, chaired by the health secretary, Matt Hancock.
Updated
A second case of coronavirus has been confirmed in the United States.
#BREAKING: confirmed case of Coronavirus in Chicago
— Marissa Parra (@MarParNews) January 24, 2020
IDPH says it’s travel related
The only other confirmed case in the US so far is in Washington. There are suspected cases, yet to be confirmed, elsewhere.
Updated
The coronavirus appears to cause similar symptoms to Sars, and seems to be capable of spreading from person to person and between cities, according to two studies published in the medical journal the Lancet.
The authors caution that their findings, the first clinical data from initial cases of new coronavirus in China, involve only a small number of patients.
They stress the need to maximise the chances of containing infection through careful surveillance, active contact tracing, and vigorous searches for the animal hosts and transmission routes to humans.
In the first new study, researchers analysed the first 41 patients infected with laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV admitted to hospital in the city of Wuhan between 16 December last year and 2 January.
The lead author Prof Bin Cao from the China-Japan friendship hospital and Capital Medical University, China, said:
Despite sharing some similar symptoms to Sars (eg fever, dry cough, shortness of breath), there are some important differences, such as the absence of upper respiratory tract symptoms (eg rhinorrhoea [runny nose], sneezing, sore throat) and intestinal symptoms, such as diarrhoea which affected 20-25% of Sars patients.
The co-author Dr Lili Ren from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, China, said:
It is hard to understand the mortality rate associated with this new virus currently, as we are only detecting severe cases in the initial stages of the epidemic, rather than the milder or asymptomatic case.
In the second paper, which is a first-of-its-kind genetic analysis, researchers studied a family of seven people who presented to hospital with unexplained pneumonia. They identified 2019-nCoV in five members who had recently visited Wuhan, and in one other family member who did not travel with them.
Only a child, who was reported by their mother to have worn a surgical mask for most of the stay in Wuhan, was not infected. Importantly, another child was infected with 2019-nCoV, but showed no clinical symptoms, suggesting that individuals may be able to spread infections in the community without knowing that they are infected.
Prof Kwok-Yung Yuen from the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen hospital, who led the research, said:
Because asymptomatic infection appears possible, controlling the epidemic will also rely on isolating patients, tracing and quarantining contacts as early as possible, educating the public on both food and personal hygiene, and ensuring healthcare workers comply with infection control.
All six patients were hospitalised in isolation and remain stable as of 20 January.
Updated
Chinese military doctors are being sent in to help with efforts in Wuhan to cope with the coronavirus outbreak.
Some 40 medical officers from the city’s military hospital have already started work in the intensive care unit of Wuhan pulmonary hospital, the South China Morning Post reports.
Staff at a military hospital held an oath-taking ceremony on Wednesday pledging they would do their best to react to the outbreak.
“We all swore that we will follow the order, make sacrifices if necessary and do our jobs as required and would not be afraid to suffer or even to die,” said one practitioner.
“[We were told that] we triumphed over Sars and we will win again this time.”
Updated
Panic and despair have been sweeping hospitals across Wuhan, where patients wearing masks queue for hours and pharmacies are running out of supplies.
The Guardian’s Rebecca Ratcliffe and Lillian Yang in Beijing have filed a piece depicting some of the increasingly challenging circumstances in the city at the centre of the new coronavirus outbreak.
Even reaching emergency wards is a struggle, following the shutdown of public transport in the city, which has been placed in complete lockdown. The roads are mostly deserted, and taxi drivers, fearing infection, are refusing to pick up patients from hospitals.
About 10 people got off a high-speed train that pulled into Wuhan on Friday afternoon but nobody got on before it resumed its journey. “I need to be with my family,” said one passenger, dragging two large cases out of the station.
Footage that appears to have been taken inside medical facilities, and shared on social media, shows staff unable to manage the huge influx of people. In one clip, a patient lies on the floor of a crowded room, apparently having fainted. In another, a woman wearing a face mask cries out for help, saying: “I have a fever.” It is not possible to verify the videos.
Updated
Britain’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, has emerged after chairing a meeting of the British government’s Cobra emergency committee, which brings together senior figures from various agencies to undertake crisis planning.
“The clinical advice is that the risk to the public remains low,” he said, adding that the UK’s chief medical officer would be making a full statement later today.
Updated
Health officials have been preparing for an outbreak that could last for months, a senior World Health Organization official in Beijing has told the New York Times.
Thousands of people were eventually likely to be infected, said Dr Gauden Galea, representative of the WHO in the Chinese capital.
“My own office is gearing up for a number of months. We do not expect it to disappear in a number of days.”
Updated
Calls for stricter outlawing of the trafficking and consumption of wild game – which has been linked to the emergence of coronavirus in Chinese cities – have been reverberating on Chinese social media.
An interesting piece from Jessica Colwell on What’s on Weibo, which reports on social media trends in China, reports that the Wuhan Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, which has been linked to the outbreak, has been closed down but criticism of such markets has been fierce.
She writes:
The hashtag “Support the banning of wild game markets” (#支持禁绝野味市场#) was topping the list of trending topics for much of Thursday and was viewed 270m times.
Another hashtag, “The source of the new coronavirus is wild animals” (#新型冠状病毒来源是野生动物#), topped the list on Wednesday and has been viewed 990m times. Online commenters are lambasting the practice of eating illegal wild game such as civet cats, the cause of the 2003 Sars virus, and bats, the suspected cause of the Wuhan coronavirus (snakes have also been suggested as a possible source of the coronavirus outbreak).
Updated
Britain’s public health authorities have put out these slides as part of an information campaign about the coronavirus outbreak.
No confirmed cases of Wuhan coronavirus have been detected in the UK and the risk to the UK population is low. If you have travelled to the affected area, make sure you know what to do if you experience symptoms: https://t.co/vvIWp72flo pic.twitter.com/hzV5A3dy4f
— Public Health England (@PHE_uk) January 24, 2020
Updated
A British man who felt unwell after returning from Wuhan but struggled to get a doctor’s appointment until revealing he had been in China has been talking to the Guardian’s Nazia Parveen.
Michael Hope, 45, ended up in quarantine for 28 hours, kept in a sealed room and being tested by medics in what he described as “spaceman suits”.
“I felt like ET, to be honest,” he said. “It was totally, totally surreal.”
On Tuesday, with his symptoms having worsened after four days to “a really bad chest – coughing to the point of vomiting”, he had no greater concerns than his GP being busy: after he explained his condition, he was told there were no appointments available and to call back in the morning. The following day, when he managed to get a telephone consultation, he told his GP he had been unable to leave his home since he had got back from China – and events suddenly speeded up.
“I told them I had flu-like symptoms and that I had travelled back from Wuhan,” he said. “At first the GP told me to come to the surgery and said we could both wear masks and I could stand outside the door – but then things quickly changed and I was told to stay at home, not to leave, and I would be visited instead.” Read on …
Updated
On the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast, Hannah Devlin has been speaking to Prof Ian Jones about exactly what a coronavirus is.
We also hear from the epidemiologist Dr Rosalind Eggo about how scientists model the spread of novel viruses, often with very little information.
Updated
More airports are beginning to screen passengers arriving from China, AP reports.
Qatar, home to the long-haul carrier Qatar Airways, said it had installed thermal scanners at its main hub, Hamad international airport.
Kuwait announced similar measures late the night before at Kuwait international airport, joining the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which on Thursday announced screenings for all passengers arriving on direct flights from China, including at Dubai international airport, the world’s busiest.
Kuwait’s state-run news agency said isolation rooms had also been opened at Kuwait international airport for passengers suspected to have the virus.
Elsewhere in the region, Bahrain said it was taking unspecified steps over the virus.
China has shut down Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province, which is the centre of the outbreak of the newly identified coronavirus.
A scattered number of cases have been confirmed in other countries, but there are fears that during the travel and festivities accompanying lunar new year starting this weekend the virus could spread more widely.
In Pakistan the Civil Aviation Authority said all passengers coming from neighbouring China would be screened for the virus, and any suspected of being infected would be kept in isolation at designated hospitals.
As many as 41 flights from China land at Pakistani airports every week.
Updated
Nepal has a case of coronavirus, Asian News International reports.
Nepal Health Ministry: A student who had returned from Wuhan, China has been found infected with #coronavirus
— ANI (@ANI) January 24, 2020
Wuhan, the city at the centre of the outbreak, is planning to build a hospital to help treat victims of the epidemic.
The template is a hospital constructed hastily in Beijing in 2003 during the Sars outbreak.
Drone footage shows dozens of diggers working to build a new hospital in Wuhan to limit the spread of coronavirus. Authorities hope the structure will be built by February 3 https://t.co/goyjId635s pic.twitter.com/aMRk4VtJNw
— ITV News (@itvnews) January 24, 2020
Updated
The UK government’s Cobra emergency committee is holding its meeting now about the outbreak.
The Guardian’s political editor, Heather Stewart, reports that ministers from the Home Office, the Foreign Office, and the departments for transport, education and communities and local government will also attend.
“There remain no confirmed cases, and we’re well prepared for any new diseases. All UK airports have medical experts on hand and information has been provided to all passengers returning from China,” said a spokesman for the prime minister.
He added that the Department for Education was checking universities’ preparedness, given the likelihood that Chinese students may be travelling to or returning from home, to coincide with the new year holiday.
Asked whether China had provided the UK with all the information it needed on the outbreak, he said: “We remain in close contact with the World Health Organization and international partners, including China.”
The prime minister, Boris Johnson, won’t be attending the Cobra meeting but is expected to host a reception at Downing Street in the next hour for the lunar new year.
Meanwhile, we’re told by Public Health England that it is unlikely that there will be any updated figures on those being tested for the virus in the UK until at least 3pm local time.
We had been led to believe that updated figures would be available at noon.
Updated
China will take stricter and more targeted measures to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, Chinese state television has reported, citing a state council meeting on virus control on Friday.
“The spread of the virus has not been cut off … Local authorities should take more responsibility and have a stronger sense of urgency,” according to state media, Reuters reported.
Updated
The Chinese military has released a handbook on Pneumonia Prevention and Control of New Coronavirus Infection, which Chinese media are encouraging people to forward to their circle of friends on social media.
The 16-page document comes with cartoon figures of heroic Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) figures and includes guidance on hygiene and disease prevention.
Let a hundred vaccines bloom..
— Ben Quinn (@BenQuinn75) January 24, 2020
China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) declares war on the #coronoavirus pic.twitter.com/bWdTH6KGic
Meanwhile …
Medical staff at the dedicated isolation ward of Wuhan's People's Hospital wish everyone a Happy New Year, saying: "We're here, don't worry [and celebrate Spring Festival]" - a hashtag that's now propagated online to ease the #coronavirus panic. #有我们在大家安心过年 pic.twitter.com/byWLd8DJ1i
— Manya Koetse (@manyapan) January 24, 2020
Updated
UK government's emergency 'Cobra' committee to discuss Coronovirus
The British government’s Cobra emergency committee will meet today to discus the coronavirus, according to the UK prime minister’s spokesperson.
The meeting will be chaired by the health secretary, Matt Hancock.
Meanwhile, a letter from Britain’s chief medical officer to clinical staff warns that the “mass movement” of people within and outside China associated with the upcoming lunar new year celebrations may “amplify transmission”.
The letter said anyone who was confirmed as having the virus would be transferred to an Airborne High Consequences Infectious Disease centre (HCID).
According to Public Health England, there are four interim Airborne HCID centres in England. These are:
• Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS foundation trust.
• Royal Free London NHS foundation trust.
• Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University hospitals NHS trust.
• Newcastle upon Tyne hospitals NHS foundation Trust.
Updated
At the UN briefing in Geneva, a WHO spokesperson has said that it is too early to draw conclusions on how serious the outbreak is.
“We may see more mild cases as surveillance intensifies. So the issue is not so much on numbers that we know will go up,” he added.
The WHO was getting its information from the Chinese authorities, he said, citing figures from midnight which recorded 830 cases including 25 deaths.
Updated
The second confirmed case in Japan of the new coronavirus transited from Hong Kong to Japan by plane and Hong Kong’s health authority needs to track the flight and passengers now, according to Wong Ka-hing, director of Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection.
Xinqi Su, a Hong Kong based AFP correspondent, reports that the patient took Cathay Dragon’s KA855 from Wuhan to Hong Kong on 19 January and then transited from Hong Kong to Japan on Cathay Pacific’s CX58.
She quotes an emerging and zoonotic diseases expert, David Hui, as saying that Hong Kong is now at “serious response level” due to imported cases, but it won’t be upgraded to an “emergency” until there are local cases and continued outbreak.
He added that it was “unpractical” for all members of the public to keep a mask on all day.
“If you are taking public transport or going to a mall with many people, I would advice you to wear a mask. You can take off the mask when you are in an office,” Hui said.
Updated
Thailand has confirmed its fifth case of the new coronavirus, a senior public health official said.
“The patient is a 33-year-old woman from Wuhan on vacation,” the deputy public health minister Sathit Patucha told Reuters, adding that she was under quarantine at Rajavithi hospital and her condition was improving.
The woman arrived in Bangkok on 21 January with her daughter and visited a private hospital complaining of a fever, coughing and muscle aches before being transferred to a government hospital on 23 January, Sathit said. Her daughter tested negative for the virus.
A Thai woman who contracted the virus after spending the new year in Wuhan was admitted to Nakhon Pathom hospital, 40 miles (60km) west of Bangkok, on 15 January and discharged on Friday after lab tests cleared her of the virus, the public health ministry said in a statement.
Thailand currently has two patients under quarantine for the virus.
Updated
McDonald’s says it is suspending business in five cities in China’s Hubei province, centre of the virus outbreak.
Updated
Two tourists visiting Finland from Wuhan in China are suspected of being infected with the coronavirus, according to YLE, Finland’s state broadcaster.
The pair went to a health centre in Ivalo, northern Finland, to seek treatment for flu-like symptoms on Thursday night.
Markku Broas, an infectious diseases physician at Lapland central hospital, said samples had been taken to Helsinki for analysis but he thought it was likely to be a case of the flu.
“There’s no major cause for concern.”
Updated
The situation is a “rapidly evolving” one which is being monitored closely but the current risk to the population in the UK is low, according to a new blog on the website of Public Health England, a state body.
It answers a number of questions it says many people have. They include:
What is Wuhan novel coronavirus and should I be concerned?
A coronavirus is a type of virus. As a group, coronaviruses are common across the world.
Typical symptoms of coronavirus include fever and a cough that may progress to a severe pneumonia causing shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. No confirmed cases of Wuhan coronavirus have been detected in the UK and we currently consider the risk to the UK population to be low.
How do we decide the risk level?
Several factors are taken into account to determine the risk level including the number of cases, the speed at which new cases are being identified and other information about the virus such as how easily it spreads from person to person.
Can we stop the virus coming to the UK?
No system of checks can claim to offer absolute protection because of the incubation period of the virus. Some people might only show symptoms 14 days after exposure to an infected person. Our approach to enhanced monitoring helps us ensure that travellers from Wuhan get the right information about what to do if they become unwell.
Why are we not monitoring all flights from China? And, what about people who have transferred from other flights?
Plans are in place to meet any direct flights from Wuhan as experts believe this is the source of the virus. However, the enhanced monitoring of direct flights will be kept under continuous review and expanded to other Chinese departure points if necessary.
Updated
Beijing’s city government is urging people who return to the Chinese capital from areas affected by the coronavirus outbreak to stay at home for 14 days, according to local reports.
Meanwhile, sections of China’s Great Wall near Beijing will be closed to visitors from Saturday.
Updated
Tributes have been paid to one of the WHO’s executive directors, Dr Peter Salama, who has died. For clarity, Salama’s death is unrelated to the coronavirus.
A medical epidemiologist from Australia, he led the Health Emergencies Programme at WHO from 2016 to 2019 and has led research and published extensively on vaccine-preventable diseases, HIV, nutrition, war-related mortality and violence, refugee and emergency health, and programming in fragile states.
Words cannot express our sorrow. We grieve together with Dr Salama's family during this difficult time. pic.twitter.com/Gzs2ogzIJx
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 24, 2020
Updated
Flights to Moscow from the Chinese city of Wuhan have been suspended over fears about the spread of the coronavirus strain, according to Interfax news agency.
Earlier this week Russia’s healthcare ministry described the virus as a biological hazard, with the deputy minister Sergei Krayevoy saying the virus was a “striking example” of the biological threats Russia faced.
Updated
The regular press briefing (livestream) from the UN’s office in Geneva is just about to start and the virus is expected to feature in questions.
There was some confusion in reports elsewhere about it. It’s not a WHO briefing.
Updated
Walt Disney Co’s Shanghai Disney Resort will be closed until further notice in response to the outbreak.
Shanghai Disney Resort closes from Saturday till further notice. pic.twitter.com/fOCvPRi52O
— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) January 24, 2020
Updated
Here’s a video explainer from the Guardian’s health editor, Sarah Boseley, in which she answers some of the most common and pressing questions surrounding the outbreak.
A former Mexican government minister who oversaw the country’s response to the H1N1 flu virus during the aftermath in 2010 has said that containing panic around the coronavirus outbreak is as important as stemming the virus itself.
Gloria Guevara, who is now president/CEO of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), based in London, said it could have a damaging and lasting economic impact on the global travel and tourism sector unless lessons were learned from previous viral epidemics.
Analysis of previous major viral epidemics by the WTTC found that the average recovery time for visitor numbers to a destination was 19 months, but with the right response and management they could recover in as little as 10 months.
Also on the theme of panic, the editor of the Lancet medical journal has tweeted:
A call for caution please. Media are escalating anxiety by talking of a “killer virus” + “growing fears”. In truth, from what we currently know, 2019-nCoV has moderate transmissibility and relatively low pathogenicity. There is no reason to foster panic with exaggerated language.
— richard horton (@richardhorton1) January 24, 2020
Updated
The World Health Organization’s decision on Thursday not to class the virus as an “international emergency”, partly because of the low number of overseas cases, has surprised some experts.
However, others have recognised that the WHO’s position on declaring a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) was a “finely balanced one”. That’s a view taken by Sir Jeremy Farrar, a medical researcher at the medical charity the Wellcome Trust.
The moment to watch out for was when the virus was transmitted among people who had not been in China, he told the BBC’s Today programme.
Comparisons with Sars were valid, he said, but at the same time he lauded the “draconian and extraordinary” measures being taken in China, which he also commended in terms of being transparent and sharing information.
Elsewhere, Dr Stephen Griffin, associate professor at the University of Leeds, said he was “personally surprised” that a PHEIC had not been called given similarities to Sars.
“However, it is often difficult to understand the precise criteria by which one of these is implemented – it sounds as though the committee had some differences of opinion,” he said, in a statement issued by the Science Media Centre.
Prof Tom Solomon, director of the UK’s health protection research unit in emerging infections at the University of Liverpool, said: “The WHO’s decision not to declare the novel coronavirus outbreak in China [a PHEIC] will surprise many. The number of reported cases and deaths is doubling every couple of days, and patients have now been reported from many Asian countries, as well as the Middle East and United States.”
Updated
China adds four more cities to transport ban
China has added four more cities to its transport ban, affecting 41 million people, according to the AFP news agency.
On the eve of China’s lunar new year, transportation had been shut down already in at least 10 cities with a total of about 33 million people. The cities are Wuhan, where the illness has been concentrated, and nine of its neighbours in central China’s Hubei province.
Updated
'Highly likely' there will be cases in UK – NHS official
It is “highly likely” that there will be cases of the virus in the UK, according to Prof Paul Cosford, medical director for Public Health England, an arm of the NHS that has tested 14 people so far.
Specialist treatment centres in various parts of the country have already been designated and authorities are focusing on providing information, with a particular focus on communities such as Chinese students.
“The NHS is fully prepared for treating people. They have their specialist infectious disease centres and have identified the ones that people will be referred to,” he told the BBC’s Today programme.
Cosford added that it was “very early days” in terms of saying whether the virus would be as serious as Sars and it would be wrong to jump to conclusions.
The next update on figure in the UK is expected to come at midday.
Updated
It was confirmed last night that two people diagnosed with flu were being tested for the virus in Scotland, where three others are also being tested on a precautionary basis.
At least three of the patients are believed to be Chinese nationals.
While there remain no confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Scotland, the Scottish government has set up a daily incident management team with Health Protection Scotland to continue monitoring the situation as it develops.
While the Scottish government would not confirm where the patients were being treated, this morning the Courier newspaper reports that two are from the Tayside region, two from Glasgow and one from Lothian.
Dundee University, in Tayside, has a joint education partnership with Wuhan University. It said five members of staff had returned from a visit to Wuhan last week but that no health concerns had been raised.
Aberdeen University said five of its staff members had also visited Wuhan during the outbreak, and one of those – who has a non-teaching role - is working from home as a precautionary measure.
Updated
First vaccines a year away – drugs companies
The first version of a vaccine has already entered laboratories at the global pharmaceutical firm Johnson & Johnson but it will be close to year before vaccines are available publicly from drugs companies.
That’s according to Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson, and Richard Hatchett, ceo of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which is funding two of projects and co-funding the third to develop vaccines.
Speaking in Davos, Hatchett told the BBC’s Today programme that CEPI hoped the vaccines it had announced partnerships for could enter clinical trials in the summer.
It would be close to a year before they were available, however, he added, and this was a very ambitious timeline. He also said that restrictions on air travel into countries such as the UK would not keep the virus out and for now the only means of responding were via public health interventions.
Companies were also looking at progressing the manufacture and release of protective equipment for hospital workers and others, said Stoffels, who added: “We know that this could become a very big global epidemic.”
Both men said the speed of development on drugs to respond to global crises had dramatically improved in the wake of the Ebola crisis, which Stoffels described as a “wake up call to the world”.
Updated
Singapore has confirmed two more cases of the new strain of coronavirus, its health ministry said on Friday, a day after identifying its first case of the infection that originated from China.
The ministry said it expected more imported cases because of high travel volume from China, Reuters reports. Singapore’s tally of confirmed cases is now three.
Updated
Fewer people have been turning up at dedicated fever clinics in Wuhan, according to western reporters on the ground in the city.
They include Chris Buckley of the New York Times and Tom Hancock of the FT, who has tweeted some before and after pictures of one of the hospitals he visited on Friday.
Agree with @ChuBailiang that there are fewer people showing up to dedicated fever clinics in Wuhan today. Here's a before and after of the same hospital on Thursday/Friday afternoon. pic.twitter.com/GCg6rGMp0z
— Tom Hancock (@hancocktom) January 24, 2020
Hancock suggests this is a positive development as many may not have had any serious infection and standing next to others for hours could spread infection.
This is Ben Quinn picking up the blog from London now. You can contact me on Twitter or flag up anything below the line here.
Updated
Yichang City, also in Hubei province, is going to impose transport restrictions, according to the Global Times.
In the UK, 14 people have been tested for suspected coronavirus. So far five have been cleared and nine are still waiting for test results.
Public Health England has not given a breakdown of where the people were tested but Downing Street said four of the suspected cases in Scotland were believed to be Chinese nationals. Another patient is understood to have been tested at Belfast’s Royal Victoria hospital.
Rebecca Ratcliffe and Lillian Yang in Beijing have pulled together the latest on the chaos and despair in hospitals across Wuhan, as the lockdown spreads to encompass at least 20 million people.
Updated
What we know so far
- The official death toll stands at 26 people, most of them in Hubei province in central China, but two people have died outside of that zone – one man just outside of Beijing, and the other in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang, which borders Russia.
- At least 830 people in China have been confirmed to have contracted the novel coronavirus so far.
- The Chinese government has locked down 11 million people in the city of Wuhan, where the virus originated, and nine other cities in Hubei province, causing chaos on the eve of the lunar new year.
- A new 1,000-bed hospital is being built in Wuhan specifically to deal with the coronavirus outbreak, and authorities there expect to have it completed and running by Monday.
- South Korea has confirmed a second case of the virus, a man in his 50s who had been working in Wuhan earlier this month.
- Japan has also confirmed a second case of the virus: a Wuhan resident in his 40s who arrived in Japan on 19 January.
- The US has confirmed one case of the virus in Seattle, while authorities in Texas are investigating a second suspected case.
- 14 people in the UK have been tested for the virus; so far, five have been cleared.
- Scottish authorities have tested at least six people with coronavirus symptoms.
- In Australia, at least six people are being monitored for signs of the virus, while public health authorities warn the world is likely to see more cases confirmed in countries outside of China in the coming days.
- The World Health Organization’s emergency committee has concluded it’s “too early” to declare an international public health emergency, but says the situation is still to be considered an emergency in China. “It has not yet become a global health emergency. It may yet become one,” said the WHO director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Updated
Reuters is reporting that Shanghai Disney will be closed to help prevent the spread of the virus.
Cinemas will suspend their operations in Guangdong province until the end of the holiday season because of the coronavirus outbreak.
The film administrative authority in Guangdong Province released an emergency notice on Friday requiring cinemas in the province to suspend their operations immediately until the end of the Spring Festival holidays to contain the spread of #WuhanCoronavirus pic.twitter.com/Uz4o6ze36h
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) January 24, 2020
Updated
Health officials in Hong Kong gave their daily press briefing about the coronavirus outbreak fully masked.
#NOW - health officials in hk now masked up during daily press conference on #CoronavirusOutbreak 🥴 https://t.co/P2exPjVhmb pic.twitter.com/frWmsFViXV
— Lok. (@sumlokkei) January 24, 2020
In Australia, researchers at the University of Queensland are racing to develop a vaccine for coronavirus.
According to AAP:
The Queensland team is one of three around the world asked to plant their foot on the accelerator and use new technologies to get a vaccine on to the market fast.
If they can replicate what they’ve done in labs with other viruses, including related influenza and Ebola, it’s possible the world could have a shield against coronavirus within six months.
The team is one of three handpicked by Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to fast-track the vaccine.
The University of Queensland team is confident they’ll get there with recently patented DNA-based molecular clamp technology.
It involves using the DNA sequence of the coronavirus – released by China after the outbreak – to produce a protein that’s the same as the one on the surface of the actual virus.
That protein will be the essence of the vaccine, capable of generating immune system responses that protect people.
“By injecting that we can get an optimal immune response in people that affords protection,” explains Dr Keith Chappell, from the university’s school of chemistry and molecular biosciences.
Updated
Updated
10 cities in China have suspended public transport
Reuters reports:
A total of 10 cities in China’s central Hubei province have suspended some public transportation over the coronavirus outbreak, the Hubei Daily reported on Friday.
Buses in cities of Chibi, Xiantao, Zhijiang, Qianjiang, Xianning, Huangshi and Enshi have suspended services.
In Zhijiang city, all public venues have been shut down except hospitals, supermarkets, farmers’ markets, gas stations and drug stores, it said. Indoor entertainment venues in Enshi city have also been shut down.
The provincial capital Wuhan city, the centre of the outbreak, and Huanggang city have been locked down while Ezhou city has shut its train stations.
Updated
“It has been splashed all over the front pages of newspapers around the world for days,” writes the Guardian contributor Michael Standaert in Sichuan. “But the outbreak of coronavirus, which has left at least 25 dead and infected more than 800, has been largely missing from China’s major state-run media.”
Friday’s front page of the People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist party’s flagship newspaper, displayed only warm wishes for lunar new year’s eve from the president, Xi Jinping, as he attended a spring festival gala at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
News of the coronavirus outbreak has also been buried during primetime CCTV news over the past two evenings, featuring as the fifth or sixth item on the daily 7pm bulletin.
Read his full story here:
Updated
China confirms 26th death
Chinese officials have confirmed another person has died from novel coronavirus, the second person to do so outside the province of Hubei, the epicentre of the virus, bringing the official death toll to 26.
The death was in the north-eastern province of Heilongjiang, which borders Russia and is about 1,200 miles (2,000km) from Wuhan, the local government said. 24 deaths have occurred in Hubei.
Updated
Footage has emerged online of the quarantine measures being taken in China to halt the spread of the virus, including overcrowded hospitals, sick people collapsing, and barricades going up across Wuhan.
Death toll rises to 26 – reports
State media is now reporting 26 deaths from the coronavirus in China, not 25.
Nervous sentiment is spreading in China. 830 cases of coronavirus have been reported. Among 26 deaths, nearly half are aged above 80. Good news is some relatively young patients are getting better.
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) January 24, 2020
The People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist party’s main newspaper, has called upon people who have recently been to Wuhan to isolate themselves at home, even if they don’t have symptoms.
The statement was made on Weibo, where people have shared panicked calls for those from Wuhan to take greater precautions to avoid infecting others.
More information has been released regarding the second person to be confirmed with novel coronavirus in South Korea.
Seoul’s health ministry said on Friday that a South Korean man in his 50s started experiencing symptoms on 10 January while working in Wuhan, AFP reports.
The man was tested upon returning to South Korea earlier this week, and was confirmed to be South Korea’s second case of the virus on Thursday, the ministry said.
According to a statement from the ministry, “the patient was adequately aware of the situation in Wuhan ... and cooperated well with the health authorities’ requests during the monitoring period after returning home.”
Updated
Armoured police vehicle at the Beijing international airport today, just outside the departure hall. Not sure if this is a spring festival or coronavirus measure. pic.twitter.com/ZqtkXrfW79
— Lily Kuo (@lilkuo) January 24, 2020
A new 1000-bed hospital is being built in Wuhan specifically to deal with the coronavirus outbreak and authorities plan to have it running by Monday, state media outlet Changjiang Daily reports.
Construction began on Thursday night with machinery, including 35 diggers and 10 bulldozers, arriving at the site.
The impromptu medical facility will be created using prefabricated buildings, and is being modelled on the experience of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003. That disease killed 774 people around the world. At the time, Beijing built a hospital in its northern suburbs in just a week, the Daily said.
Australia's chief medical officer says country is "prepared"
The Australian government’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Brendan Murphy, has confirmed that there are still no verified cases of coronavirus in Australia.
In a press conference this afternoon, Murphy attempted to downplay the threat of the virus in Australia, saying that while there are several people who are being regularly tested for the disease, none of them have tested positive yet. Australia is prepared and has the capacity to isolate those people if necessary, he said.
“Approximately 25% of people who contract this infection … seem to get a more severe illness, but we do suspect there are a number of additional cases that are so mild they haven’t come to our attention,” Murphy said.
“It is of concern that there are some cases outside of China, but they are small numbers and have been well-managed in their locations.”
He said it was likely there would be more cases confirmed outside of China in the coming days. “That’s the pattern we’ve observed,” he said. “These things are very hard to predict and predictions are often proven to be wrong, so we’re just keeping a watching brief.”
Murphy said he had briefed Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the minister for health, Greg Hunt, on the situation.
He referenced the World Health Organisation’s decision not to declare the virus an official public health emergency of international concern, but said the committee was divided on this front.
“That doesn’t mean in any way that they’re not taking this seriously. They do see this as a serious issue and they are upping some of their responses,” he said.
That response includes sending in a “specialist team” to properly identify the “animal vector” that caused the disease to be transmitted to humans.
Some stark pictures of the lockdown experience in Wuhan have been circulating on Twitter over the last 24 hours thanks to the New York Times’ Chris Buckley.
This is Wuhan tonight. pic.twitter.com/kkoKdwa75R
— Chris Buckley 储百亮 (@ChuBailiang) January 23, 2020
Friday is the eve of the Lunar New Year celebrations 除夕 and it’s going to be a melancholy and worrisome time for many in China. In Wuhan I’ve run into several migrant workers from Henan who can’t leave. But what about those who have already left to home towns and villages? pic.twitter.com/Az0392isyb
— Chris Buckley 储百亮 (@ChuBailiang) January 24, 2020
Schools in Singapore are asking parents and staff to provide details of travel during the lunar new year holidays, in a measure aimed at halting the spread of coronavirus, Reuters reports.
The first case of coronavirus was confirmed there on Thursday: a 66-year-old Chinese national, who lives in Wuhan and arrived in Singapore from Guangzhou on Monday night.
Parents in Singapore have started receiving emails from schools asking them to state where their children will be travelling for holidays.
“In this phase of enhanced preparedness, our schools, including Ministry of Education Kindergartens, and Institutes of Higher Learning will take measures to ensure the safety and well-being of our students and staff,” a spokesperson from education ministry said.
An insight, via US news network CNN, into the way the first person diagnosed with the virus in the States is being treated, and the measures being taken to isolate him and prevent the spread of the disease.
The man arrived at the hospital in a special isolated gurney called an ISOPOD and has been treated in a two-bed isolated area, says Dr. George Diaz, chief of the infectious disease division at the Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington. https://t.co/HznZCw6tEH pic.twitter.com/YDpIxFUHES
— CNN (@CNN) January 24, 2020
Here’s a handy explainer on what exactly the coronavirus is and how dangerous it could be:
Canadian acrobatic troupe Cirque du Soleil has announced that its shows in Hangzhou, China are canceled due to concerns over the coronavirus outbreak.
The call was made in response to Chinese officials’ requests to close all indoor activities with 100 or more people in attendance in order to contain the outbreak, the company said in a statement.
“Right now, we all have the responsibility to step up, and to do preventive activities,” Cirque du Soleil head Daniel Lamarre said in the statement.
Details of how cities in China are trying to control the spread of coronavirus are emerging. In Wuhan taxis are now only allowed to carry two passengers at a time. In Hubei province travel agencies have been told to suspend their tours.
Australia investigating four cases in NSW
In Australia, New South Wales Health has confirmed it is investigating four possible cases of coronavirus in the state, according to the national broadcaster, the ABC.
Health authorities in the northern state of Queensland, meanwhile, are assessing two people amid concerns they may have contracted the virus. Four others have been cleared.
“We’ve already tested four individuals who were suspected cases. All four came back negative,” Queensland’s chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young told reporters on Friday, according to the Australian Associated Press. “We’ve got another two suspects at the moment that we’re assessing who may need testing.”
Updated
Another Chinese city will suspend its public transport
#Breaking Starting from 10 am Friday, Huangshi, another city in Hubei Province, would suspend ferry and bus operation, close the Yangtze river bridge and stop passenger traffic. pic.twitter.com/HywpU6uYua
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) January 24, 2020
A bit more new information about what’s happening in China. The National Health Commission said that in addition to the 830 confirmed cases, authorities were also examining 1,072 suspected cases of the virus, according to AFP.
Out of the total 830 confirmed cases, 177 were in serious condition. 34 people have been “cured and discharged”.
Meanwhile, the South Korean government has confirmed that country’s second case of the virus.
Updated
The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post is reporting today that medical staff are being infected with coronavirus at a much faster rate than previously reported. The SCMP does not identify its two sources but they dispute the Chinese Centre for Disease Control’s assessment that 15 hospital staff had been infected in Wuhan city, saying 14 staff had been infected in one hospital alone.
The Chinese government has been accused of downplaying the severity of the outbreak by residents who point to its repeated assurances that the virus was not serious, was “controllable”, and the fact that Wuhan has only just now been put into lockdown, even as cases of the virus have been reported in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the United States.
We’re already getting a glimpse of what the Friday morning papers will look like over in the UK. Unsurprisingly, coronavirus is leading or supporting most of the coverage.
“Is the killer virus here?” shrieks the headline on the Daily Mail.
MAIL: Is the killer virus here? Plus: Why do these lesser rent a royals always want more? #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/DqPkfqjnHB
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) January 23, 2020
The Daily Mirror also leads with coronavirus, focusing on the six people who have been tested in Britain overnight.
MIRROR: Killer Virus: 6 tested in Britain PLUS @vicderbyshire : I’m devastated #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/LwzePJNgv9
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) January 23, 2020
The Times is slightly more subdued.
THE TIMES: Growing fears over virus as tests begin in Britain #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/RMikDrkflS
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) January 23, 2020
“How big is the threat of coronavirus?” asks the Independent.
INDEPENDENT DIGITAL: Criminal probe over baby deaths at maternity unit #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/IdCWYdq5ao
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) January 23, 2020
High speed rail shares the Guardian front page with coronavirus and the ongoing Harvey Weinstein trial.
THE GUARDIAN: HS2 late and billions over budget due to Tory failures, report finds #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/zl0WfVr1Hu
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) January 23, 2020
Meanwhile the Daily Telegraph has focused on law and order, with the disease outbreak getting the prime visual slot.
DAILY TELEGRAPH: Police give up on charging thieves #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/qsJcBHSqty
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) January 23, 2020
Death toll rises to 25
Hello, this is Stephanie Convery in Australia, taking over from my colleague Nadeem Badshah in London.
The Chinese government has just confirmed the death toll from novel coronavirus has risen to 25, and the number of confirmed cases in the country now sits at 830, according to the National Health Commission.
Summary of Thursday’s developments
- 14 people in the UK have been tested for coronavirus, Public Health England said. Five people tested negative and nine are still awaiting the results.
- The Scottish Government earlier confirmed that five people were being examined after presenting with symptoms of the illness, while it is understood that another patient was being tested at Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital.
- 25 people in China have died from the virus, including an 80-year-old man in Hebei province, near the capital Beijing, on Wednesday – the first confirmed death outside Hubei province, in central China.
- The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) emergency committee concluded it is “too early” to declare an international public health emergency over the coronavirus outbreak. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said: “Make no mistake. This is an emergency in China. “But it has not yet become a global health emergency. It may yet become one.” Dr Tedros said 584 cases have been reported to the WHO.
- Universities across the UK say they are monitoring the coronavirus outbreak as one institution warned students thinking of heading home for the Chinese New Year that they would face being quarantined on their return. The University of Chester said it has notified its students currently in the UK that if they return to China for Chinese New Year they will not be readmitted without a suitable quarantine period.
- Japan’s health ministry said it had confirmed the country’s second case of a novel coronavirus strain in a man who travelled from Wuhan. The ministry said the man in his 40s was a resident of the Chinese city where the outbreak began and arrived in Japan on January 19.
- One person in Australia has been quarantined and will undergo testing after being suspected of contracting the coronavirus, according to reports. The person was placed into quarantine in an unnamed hospital and will have tests on Friday after arriving on a flight to Sydney, a New South Wales Ministry of Health spokesperson said.
- Authorities in Texas are investigating a second suspected case on US soil of the coronavirus virus, officials said. Brazos County, northwest of Houston, “is investigating a suspected case of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV),” officials wrote in a statement on Facebook. “The patient traveled from Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus originated.”
Updated
As the death toll from the new coronavirus climbs, questions remain about how it spread to humans and how much of a threat it poses across the world.
Cases have been confirmed in the US, Japan, South Korea and Thailand, while there are understood to be at least fourteen suspected cases tested in the UK, with five confirmed negative.
Now, fears are growing that the increased travel expected over the upcoming Lunar New Year period could aid the spread.
But just how worried should we be in the UK?
- How does this compare with previous outbreaks?
Several experts say the new coronavirus appears to be less severe than its predecessors.
Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said typical flu epidemics can kill tens of thousands of people, but that previous new coronavirus outbreaks have led to fewer deaths.
For example, severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) killed about 800 people, while Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) led to about 450 deaths.
Prof Hunter said: “This new strain seems to be rather less lethal than the previous two outbreaks, however this could still change.
“All new outbreaks are worrying, especially in the early weeks when it is not clear how the outbreak could progress.
“I think it unlikely that the Wuhan coronavirus will cause a major public health issue in the UK, in large part because of our existing health system.”
US researchers writing in the journal JAMA also said the fatality rate appears to be lower than that of Sars or Mers.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday it was “too early” to declare a public health emergency of international concern.
Dr Andrew Freedman, reader in infectious diseases at Cardiff University, said it is not clear how contagious the virus is.
He said: “This is important in determining the risk of a much larger outbreak developing, with spread to people who have not travelled to Wuhan.
“It is likely that the US and other countries will be considering what further measures are needed to limit the risk of more cases arriving from China.”
- What is the risk to the UK?
England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, has revised the risk to the UK population from very low to low.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the UK is one of the first countries to develop a test for coronavirus and the NHS is ready to respond to any cases.
He added: “The public can be assured that the whole of the UK is always well prepared for these type of outbreaks and we will remain vigilant and keep our response under constant review in light of emerging scientific evidence.”
The Foreign Office has advised against all but essential travel to Wuhan, but has not changed its advice on other destinations which have reported cases.
- Could cases be confirmed in the UK?
A handful of cases have been identified abroad, including in Japan and the US, but there have been no confirmed cases in the UK.
Officials from Public Health England have been monitoring direct flights from Wuhan city to the UK.
Professor Neil Ferguson, director of the Medical Research Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, said the UK is not a major destination of visitors travelling out of Wuhan.
But he added: “Border screening and in this case, in the UK, alerting the health system, is not 100% foolproof - there could be a mild case.”
In addition, the screening will only catch people already showing symptoms.
Dr Nathalie MacDermott, NIHR academic clinical lecturer, King’s College London, said: “It is wise to implement checks at this stage given the evidence on increasing spread of the virus to other countries and across continents, but largely for the purpose of being in contact with travellers from affected regions in case they become unwell.
“If they were to be unwell at the airport or become unwell in the future it will allow more prompt isolation and testing of the patient, with appropriate tracing of any people the patient may have been in contact with.
“This will hopefully limit the amount of people the person may have contact with while unwell and so limit the spread of the virus.”
Japan confirms country’s second case of coronavirus strain
Japan’s health ministry said it had confirmed the country’s second case of a novel coronavirus strain in a man who travelled from Wuhan.
In a statement, the ministry said the man in his 40s was a resident of the Chinese city where the outbreak began and arrived in Japan on January 19.
He reported having had a fever for several days before his arrival but said his condition had stabilised by the time of his arrival in Japan.
On January 22, he reported a fever and he is now in a Tokyo hospital receiving treatment, the ministry said.
The statement added the man denied having visited the market in Wuhan identified as the source of the outbreak and said he had worn a medical mask while travelling.
Fourteen people in the UK tested for coronavirus
Fourteen people in the UK have been tested for coronavirus, Public Health England said.
Five people tested negative and nine are still awaiting the results.
A person in Australia has been quarantined and will undergo testing after being suspected of contracting the coronavirus, according to reports.
The person was placed into quarantine in an unnamed hospital and will have tests on Friday, a New South Wales Ministry of Health spokesperson told news.com.au.
The individual arrived on a flight to Sydney. As the flight touched down, passengers and crew reportedly wore face masks and those who raised concerns about their health had their temperature taken.
Updated
Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters
US investigating second suspected case of Chinese virus
Authorities in Texas are investigating a second suspected case on US soil of the coronavirus virus, officials said.
Brazos County, northwest of Houston, “is investigating a suspected case of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV),” officials wrote in a statement on Facebook.
“The patient traveled from Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus originated.
“Health care providers were aware of public health guidance on novel coronavirus and quickly recognized that the patient met the criteria for coronavirus testing and is being kept isolated at home, while the precautionary testing is done.”
A blood sample from the patient has to be tested at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) before the case if confirmed.
If confirmed, the patient would be the second person to be infected with the virus in the US after a man in his 30s near Seattle reported himself to authorities on January 19.
He is said to be recovering well and health officials have said he will be released soon.
Martin Hibberd, Professor of Emerging Infectious Disease at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has given his view on the World Health Organisation not declaring the coronavirus outbreak a global emergency.
He said: “This announcement is not surprising as more evidence may be needed to make the case of announcing a PHEIC.
“WHO were criticised after announcing the pandemic strain of novel H1N1_2009, when the virus was eventually realised to have similar characteristics to seasonal influenza and is perhaps trying to avoid making the same mistake here with this novel coronavirus.
“To estimate the true severity of this new disease requires identifying mild or asymptomatic cases, if there are any, while determining the human to human transmission rate might require more evidence.
“However, all this new evidence needs to be rapidly obtained over the next few days if the world is to be as prepared as possible, so WHO should issue a different type of alert to mobilise a full investigation.”
Programmes to speed up the development of vaccines against coronavirus have received a funding boost.
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), partially financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will fund three programmes with the aim being to advance nCoV-2019 vaccine candidates into clinical testing as quickly as possible.
CEPI aims to develop vaccines for new and emerging diseases before they become global health emergencies.
It said it has moved with great urgency to promote the development of new vaccines against the emerging threat of nCoV-2019, adding that the novel coronavirus represents the first new epidemic disease of note to emerge since CEPI’s founding at Davos in 2017.
Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI, said: “Given the rapid global spread of the nCoV-2019 virus the world needs to act quickly and in unity to tackle this disease.
“Our intention with this work is to leverage our work on the MERS coronavirus and rapid response platforms to speed up vaccine development.
“There are no guarantees of success, but we hope this work could provide a significant and important step forward in developing a vaccine for this disease.
“Our aspiration with these technologies is to bring a new pathogen from gene sequence to clinical testing in 16 weeks - which is significantly shorter than where we are now.”
An 18th person in China has died from the virus.
The 80-year-old man died in Hebei province, near the capital Beijing, on Wednesday.
It is the first confirmed death outside Hubei province, in central China.
Updated
Dr Jeremy Farrar, a medical researcher and director of The Wellcome Trust, said it respects the advice of the World Health Organization’s Emergency Committee to not declare a global emergency but says this must be kept under constant review.
He said: “Countries should act now on the recommendations made by the committee on how best to prepare and respond to this epidemic. There is no need to wait.
“The decision does not change the fact that the urgent focus must remain on identifying the gaps in understanding of this virus, and on a continued robust, coordinated global public health response.
“This outbreak and the speed with which this new virus has spread in China and travelled across borders, is a reminder of how vulnerable we are globally to outbreaks of infectious diseases known and unknown.
“Travel restrictions may be important in buying time, to signal the seriousness of the situation and may help reduce the impact, but are unlikely stop this epidemic.”
An Italian singer was hospitalised after showing “suspected symptoms’’ of the coronavirus including a cough and fever.
She started feeling sick after returning home from a tour of Asia that included the area of Wuhan.
Tests for the virus that infected the singer, who has not been named publicly, are proceeding.
“The patient is currently in contact isolation at the Infectious Diseases Department,’’ a note from the hospital read.
“She is receiving the necessary treatments pending test results’.”
Universities across the UK say they are monitoring the coronavirus outbreak as one institution warned students thinking of heading home for the Chinese New Year that they would face being quarantined on their return.
The University of Chester said it has notified its students currently in the UK that if they return to China for Chinese New Year they will not be readmitted without a suitable quarantine period.
The University of Aberdeen, which has a partnership with Wuhan University, said it was not aware of any students in Wuhan - where the outbreak is thought to have originated - who have returned from the area recently.
But a spokesman said: “The university is aware of five members of staff who have visited Wuhan during the outbreak, four of whom returned to the university three or more weeks ago.
“The remaining member of staff has a non-teaching role and is working from home as a precautionary measure.
“Advice regarding travel precautions has been issued to staff and students in line with Government guidance.”
A Newcastle University spokesman said it had issued protection advice to around 300 students who have links to the Hubei province at the centre of the health scare, as well as offering support for those concerned.
A spokesman said: “We have arranged a dedicated health event for any student arriving from China in the last month, ensuring they register with a doctor.”
Universities have followed Foreign Office advice warning people not to travel to the region affected.
A spokesman for the University of Dundee said it has issued advice to students recently in China and said they should be careful if receiving items, especially food, from areas where the virus is present.
It runs a joint education partnership with Wuhan University, with 34 students on the programme in Dundee who arrived in September.
Five staff returned from a visit to Wuhan last week, the spokesman added.
He said no health concerns have been raised among either group, adding: “We will continue to monitor the situation, taking advice from the relevant agencies as to appropriate action.”
A spokesman for the University of Nottingham, which has a campus in the Chinese city of Ningbo, said: “We are not aware of any staff or students in the affected areas in China.
“However, the university is keeping students informed of the latest advice by UK and Chinese health authorities, including precautionary measures such as good hand and respiratory hygiene.”
Top experts on infectious diseases held a hastily-arranged press conference on the Coronavirus at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier today.
Jeremy Farrar, of the Wellcome Trust, gave reporters a swift explanation -- about how the virus probably jumped from bats to humans at a market in Wutan, before then starting to spread between humans.
The fact the virus spreads between humans through the respiratory route makes it particularly serious, Farrar explained; experts have been worrying about this happening for some time.
Farrar said: “We want to keep a calm, moderated approach, but we need to take this incredibly seriously”.
Farfer, who says he’s “very concerned” about the situation, also warned against thinking of it as a China-only problem.
“This will become a global issue. This isn’t just a China issue, it’s going to affect us all.”
Richard Hatchett, Chief Executive Officer of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations (CEPI), announced that three new partnerships with vaccine producers have just been agreed.
“Our hope is to have these vaccines developed very rapidly and moved into human trials soon, maybe as soon as this summer,” Hatchett said.
Hatchett and Farrar both spoke about the importance of using non-pharmaceutical interventions, until a vaccine is developed. That includes public health measures - hand-washing, keeping people apart, masks, and travel restrictions.
Farrar’s hunch is that the coronavirus will have a lower mortality rate than the SARS epidemic 28 years ago, which killed 788 people. But if it spreads faster and further than SARS, and isn’t controlled in time, then the deathtoll could be higher than SARS. But there’s a lot of uncertainty.
He reminded reporters that the influenza epidemic a century ago had a low mortality rate, but killed 50m people because it spread so far.
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Advice from the WHO
Reduce your risk of #coronavirus infectionhttps://t.co/PKzKaO2yfK pic.twitter.com/bLmr4z3y1t
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 23, 2020
WHO say 584 cases have been reported including 17 deaths
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organisation, said 584 cases have been reported to the WHO including 17 deaths, which is lower than the previously reported figure.
Some 575 of the overall cases and all the deaths reported are in China.
Other cases have been reported in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, the US and Vietnam.
Ghebreyesus said it is known the virus can kill “although for most people it causes milder symptoms”, adding: “We know that among those infected, one quarter of patients have experienced severe disease.
“We know that most of those who have died had underlying health conditions such as hypertension, diabetes or cardiovascular disease that weakened their immune systems.
“We know that there is human-to-human transmission in China, but for now it appears limited to family groups and health workers caring for infected patients.
“At this time, there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission outside China, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
“There is still a lot we don’t know. We don’t know the source of this virus, we don’t understand how easily it spreads and we don’t fully understand its clinical features or severity.”
Ghebreyesus added it is likely that we will see more cases in other parts of China and other countries.
Peter Piot, professor of global health and director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, believes we are at a critical phase in the outbreak.
He said: “Regardless of the decision not to declare this a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, intensified international collaboration and more resources will be crucial to stopping this outbreak in its tracks.
“National authorities and the World Health Organisation will need to continue to monitor developments very closely.
“There are still many missing pieces in the jigsaw puzzle to fully understanding this new virus which is spreading rapidly across China, and most probably around the world.
“The good news is that the data to date suggest that this virus may have a lower mortality than SARS, we have a diagnostic test and there is greater transparency than decades gone by.
“And that is essential because you cannot deal with a potential pandemic in one country alone.”
The Boarding Schools Association (BSA) has issued guidance to its members that while there seems to be “no immediate cause for concern” over the coronavirus outbreak, the situation needs to be monitored carefully.
It said: “In particular, schools might wish to consider planning for the eventuality that some boarders either cannot or choose not to travel home at half-term or, more likely, Easter.
“BSA would advise schools to consider erring on the side of caution to minimise the risk to students and staff.”
The guidance recommends that schools needing case-specific information contact the relevant public health authorities.
The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) emergency committee has concluded it is “too early” to declare an international public health emergency over the coronavirus outbreak.
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said: “Make no mistake. This is an emergency in China.
“But it has not yet become a global health emergency. It may yet become one.’’
The director-general added: “I wish to reiterate the fact that I am not declaring a PHEIC [Public Health Emergency of International Concern] today should not be taken as a sign that WHO does not think the situation is serious, or that we are not taking it seriously.
“Nothing could be further from the truth. WHO is following this outbreak every minute of every day.”
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Five people in Scotland tested for coronavirus
Five people in Scotland are being tested for coronavirus as a precaution, the Scottish government said.
A Scottish government spokeswoman confirmed that two people diagnosed with flu were now being tested for the virus while three others are also being tested on a precautionary basis.
At least three of the patients are believed to be Chinese nationals.
The spokesperson said: “There are currently no confirmed cases of coronavirus (WN Co-V) in Scotland and the risk to the Scottish public remains low.
“Following travel to Wuhan, China, two people confirmed as diagnosed with influenza are now being tested for Wuhan Novel Coronavirus as a precautionary measure only. Three further people are also undergoing testing on a similar precautionary basis.
“As the situation develops we will update should there be any confirmed cases of coronavirus, rather than provide a running update on cases being considered on a precautionary basis.”
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Universities UK, the representative organisation for the sector, said: “UK universities with students in affected areas have been closely monitoring the coronavirus situation as it unfolds and will follow the latest FCO advice.
“We can confirm that this afternoon Universities UK International was in contact with Public Health England to discuss how we can support them in getting communications to our members.”
The National Union of Students also said it will continue to monitor the situation closely.
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What we know so far
Hi, I’m Nadeem Badshah, taking over from my colleague Damien Gayle. Here’s where we are so far:
- Latest official figures say the number of confirmed cases of the coronavirus in China is at least 633, and 18 people have died. Chinese authorities have put five cities on lockdown measures – Wuhan, Huanggang, Ezhou, Chibi and Zhijiang.
- WHO says the outbreak was caused by a previously unknown type of coronavirus, a broad family of infections ranging from the common cold to more serious illnesses like severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars).
- Patients report a fever, cough and other symptoms of pneumonia.
- Coronaviruses mostly infect animals, but can mutate and jump to humans, and then human-to-human transmission is possible. Chinese authorities have confirmed that the virus is being passed directly from human to human. It appears to have originated in a seafood and meat market in Wuhan, and preliminary research suggests the virus was passed to humans from snakes.
- Three people in Scotland are being tested for the virus after travelling to Wuhan. Meanwhile, the UK health secretary said authorities were well-prepared to deal with a potential outbreak.
- Cases have also been reported in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and the US. Major airports are screening international arrivals from the region. Patients in all these cases were either residents of Wuhan or recent visitors to the city. An Indian nurse working in Saudi Arabia has also been confirmed to be infected, and two Chinese citizens in Vietnam have tested positive.
- Beijing has cancelled a number of major public events and restricted tourist access in the city in an attempt to contain the spread of the outbreak.
- There are not any medicines or vaccines developed specifically to tackle the Wuhan virus but experts in Davos announced on Thursday that scientists were working on one.
Updated
A spokesman for Boris Johnson said the government will keep the coronavirus situation under continuous review.
Stocks fell on Wall Street in midday trading Thursday as investors worried that a deadly virus outbreak in China could continue spreading and hurt the global economy, the Associated Press reports.
Banks and other financial companies led the losses. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 1.72% from 1.77% late Wednesday. Financial institutions rely on higher bond yields to set lucrative interest rates on mortgages and other loans. Bank of America fell 1.5%.
Health care stocks also broadly fell. Edwards LifeSciences, which makes heart valves, slipped 5.6%.
Crude oil prices slumped and weighed on energy stocks. Exxon Mobil fell 1.5%.
Utilities and real estate companies held onto slight gains as investors shifted money into the safe-play sectors.
Scottish government comments on three suspected cases
Three people in Scotland are being tested for suspected coronavirus after travelling to the country from Wuhan in China, Sarah Boseley reports.
A statement from the Scottish government said there were three suspect cases.
“Following travel to Wuhan, China, two people confirmed as diagnosed with influenza are now being tested for Wuhan novel coronavirus as a precautionary measure only. A third person is also currently undergoing testing on a similar precautionary basis,” said a government spokesman.
“There are currently no confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK and the risk to the Scottish public remains low.”
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Belfast hospital testing patient for coronavirus
Tests are being undertaken to rule out coronavirus at a hospital in Belfast, PA Media reports.
It is understood a patient did arrive at the Royal Victoria in the west of the city showing symptoms which may or may not be associated with the condition but it will be some time before results are returned.
The Belfast Health Trust, which runs services in the city, was unable to make any comment. The Public Health Agency (PHA) also declined to comment.
There is no suggestion at this stage that the patient has coronavirus.
The Royal is Northern Ireland’s largest hospital and a centre for many medical specialisms.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has followed the UK foreign office in warning people to avoid all non-essential to Wuhan, the centre of the coronavirus outbreak.
CDC raised its travel alert for the coronavirus outbreak to a level 3.
The agency earlier this week said it expects to see more cases of the Wuhan coronavirus in the United States and announced plans to expand screening to airports in Atlanta and Chicago.
First confirmed coronavirus death outside Hubei
China’s Hebei provincial health authority said a patient infected with the new coronavirus has died, marking the first confirmed death outside Hubei province where the outbreak began.
The Health Commission of Hebei Province said in a statement dated Thursday that the patient, 80, died on Wednesday but was not confirmed to have been infected with the virus until Thursday, Reuters reports.
The death toll from the outbreak now stands at 18.
Updated
Airports around the world are implementing screening checks for passengers with potential coronavirus infections.
Italy received its latest direct flight from Wuhan on Thursday morning, with 202 passengers directed through a special “health channel” at Rome’s Fiumicino airport, where they were subject to body temperature checks.
The Italian health ministry had announced the special measures a day before.
“The health checks arranged by the health ministry at Fiumicino airport on the 202 passengers and the crew that arrived in Rome this morning on a flight from Wuhan were all negative,” Carlo Racani, the health director for the Rome airports company told ANSA.
“They are all well”.
A number of universities in Scotland have student exchange arrangements with Chinese institutions, Libby Brooks reports.
Glasgow University has a partnership agreement with the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, where the current outbreak began, with 23 students currently studying at Glasgow on that programme. The university issued guidance to its students yesterday to follow the advice being issued on the Coronavirus outbreak, adding: “We are conscious that our students may have family and friends in the locality and our thoughts are with anyone who may have been affected”.
Dundee University also has a joint education partnership with the University of Wuhan, with 34 students currently studying in Scotland.
A spokesperson for the Dundee University said: “There have been no health concerns raised among that group but we will continue to monitor the situation closely.” Five staff members returned from a visit to Wuhan last week, but again, the spokesperson said that “no health concerns have been raised at this time”.
A spokesman for the University of Dundee told PA it had issued advice to students recently in China and said they should be careful if receiving items, especially food, from areas where the virus is present.
Professor Juergen Haas, the specialist in infectious diseases at the University of Edinburgh, who confirmed the Scottish tests, explained: “Here at the University of Edinburgh we have more than 2,000 students from China and they are always coming and going back to China so we are relatively sure we will have cases in the UK from travellers coming back from China.”
Updated
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has updated its advice for Britons planning to travel to China, warning against “all but essential travel to Wuhan.”
The FCO’s advice, updated yesterday and still current, says:
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) advise against all but essential travel to Wuhan city, Hubei Province. This is due to the ongoing novel coronavirus outbreak. Public Health England has offered advice to travellers. You should comply with any additional screening measures put in place by the local authorities.
That Public Health England advice linked to in the above quote announced that screening measures were being put in place for passengers arriving in Heathrow from the thrice-weekly direct flights between the UK and Wuhan.
The enhanced monitoring package includes a number of measures that will help to provide advice to travellers if they feel unwell.
For those travelling back directly from Wuhan, this includes a Port Health team who will meet each direct flight aircraft to provide advice and support to those that feel unwell. The team will include the Principal Port Medical Inspector, Port Health Doctor, Administrative Support, and Team Leader.
They will check for symptoms of coronavirus and provide information to all passengers about symptoms and what to do if they become ill. Mandarin and Cantonese language support will be available to Public Health England (PHE) and leaflets will be available to passengers.
Top experts on infectious diseases have held a hastily-arranged press conference on the Coronavirus at the World Economic Forum this afternoon, reports Graeme Wearden in Davos.
Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust gave reporters a swift explanation -- about how the virus probably jumped from bats to humans at a market in Wutan, before then starting to spread between humans.
The fact the virus spreads between humans through the respiratory route makes it particularly serious, Farrar explained; experts have been worrying about this happening for some time. Farrar said:
We want to keep a calm, moderated approach, but we need to take this incredibly seriously
Farrar, who says he’s “very concerned” about the situation, also warned against thinking of it as a China-only problem:
This will become a global issue. This isn’t just a China issue, it’s going to affect us all.
Richard Hatchett, Chief Executive Officer of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovations (CEPI), announced that three new partnerships with vaccine producers have just been agreed (see previous post).
Hatchett and Farrar both spoke about the importance of using non-pharmaceutical interventions, until a vaccine is developed. That includes public health measures -- hand-washing, keeping people apart, masks, and travel restrictions.
Farrar’s hunch is that the coronavirus will have a lower mortality rate than the SARS epidemic 28 years ago, which killed 788 people. But if it spreads faster and further than SARS, and isn’t controlled in time, then the death toll could be higher than SARS. But there’s a lot of uncertainty.
He reminded reporters that the influenza epidemic a century ago had a low mortality rate, but killed 50m people because it spread so far.
There’s more in our Davos liveblog:
Work begins on potential vaccines
Three separate research teams backed by a global coalition set up to fight epidemic diseases are to start work on developing potential vaccines against the new coronavirus that has caused a disease outbreak in China, Reuters reports.
Developing new vaccines has traditionally taken up to a decade, but the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which is funding two of the projects and co-funding the third, said the aim now is to work much faster.
Its plan is to have at least one potential vaccine in clinical trials by June, offering the chance that a shot could fully developed, tested and approved for use in a year.
The research will be conducted by drug and vaccine developer Moderna working with the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; the U.S. firm Inovio Pharma ; and a team at the University of Queensland, Australia.
The new coronavirus, known as nCoV-2019, first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan but cases have been detected as far away as the United States. It has killed 17 people and infected more than 600.
Each of the three projects will test a distinct scientific approach to developing a preventative vaccine.
“Our aspiration with these technologies is to bring a new pathogen from gene sequence to clinical testing in 16 weeks,” said Richard Hatchett, CEPI’s chief executive.
“There are no guarantees of success, but we hope this work could provide a significant and important step forward in developing a vaccine for this disease.”
But it has to be said that there are no vaccines against either SARS or MERS yet, so perhaps they are being a little ambitious.
Updated
Five Chinese cities now under lockdown
Five Chinese cities have been put on lockdown and Beijing has cancelled a number of major public events in an attempt to contain the spread of a deadly coronavirus outbreak.
Authorities banned transport links from Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, on Thursday morning, suspending buses, subways, ferries and shutting the airport and train stations to outgoing passengers. Later in the day, the nearby central Chinese cities of Huanggang, Ezhou and Chiba also announced traffic restrictions to prevent residents from leaving.
Starting at midnight, long-distance buses, the rapid transit system, and train station in Huanggang would be shut, according to a notice from the local government. Movie theatres, internet cafes, and other entertainment venues would all stop operating. Residents should not leave the city, except for “special reasons”.
Updated
What is the virus causing illness in Wuhan?
It is a novel coronavirus – that is to say, a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before.
What are the symptoms caused by the Wuhan coronavirus?
The virus causes pneumonia. Those who have fallen ill are reported to suffer coughs, fever and breathing difficulties. As this is viral pneumonia, antibiotics are of no use.
Is the virus being transmitted from one person to another?
Human-to-human transmission has been confirmed by China’s national health commission, although it does not appear to be happening easily as was the case with Sars. As of 23 January the Chinese authorities had acknowledged 517 cases and 17 deaths. The virus has also been confirmed outside China, in the US, Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
How worried are the experts?
There are fears that the coronavirus may spread more widely during the week-long lunar new year holidays, which start on 24 January, when millions of Chinese people travel home to celebrate. At the moment, it appears that people in poor health are at greatest risk, as is always the case with flu.
Should we panic?
No.
This is a very truncated version of a much more detailed coronavirus explainer running elsewhere on the site. Read more here:
Updated
Coronavirus, the story so far
In case you have not been following the story of the coronavirus outbreak, here is an outline of the past three weeks of developments, since first reports began emerging from China at the beginning of the month.
It is around three weeks since the first cases emerged in Wuhan, east China of an unexplained viral pneumonia, sparking fears of a recurrence of the Sars outbreak of 2002-03 that killed more than 700 people.
By 5 January, 59 suspected cases of the new outbreak had been diagnosed, with the most common symptom being fever, and shortness of breath and lung infections appearing in a smaller number of cases. People were being isolated while they received treatment.
Most of the cases were of workers, handlers or frequent visitors to one food market in Wuhan city, the Huanan South China Seafood Market. On 11 January, the disease claimed its first victim, a 61-year-old man who was a regular buyer at the Huanan market.
As alarm spread, the World Health Organization said a newly emerging member of the family of viruses that caused the deadly outbreaks of Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) could be the cause of the outbreak. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that can cause infections ranging from the common cold to Sars. Some of the virus types cause less serious disease, while some like the one that causes Mers are far more severe
The outbreak came at a particularly mobile time for Chinese people, with millions on the move to be with loved ones for the lunar new year, so it was inevitable that the virus would spread. The first case outside China was detected in Thailand on 14 January, in a woman who had travelled to the country from China. Japan confirmed its first case two days later, but as recently as last weekend – and despite a second death in China from the virus – no screening was taking place in airports in the UK or Australia.
On Tuesday US and Australian health officials announced their first domestic cases, at the same time as Chinese doctors confirmed human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus and airports around the world began introducing screening checks for visitors from affected regions.
Updated
At first minister’s questions this morning, Nicola Sturgeon gave assurances that the Scottish government and its health protection agency were closely monitoring the situation. She said:
I should say that the risk to the public in Scotland and, indeed, in the United Kingdom is currently classified as low, but obviously that is kept under review. Health Protection Scotland is liaising with National Health Service boards and is currently in daily contact with Public Health England and liaising daily with colleagues in the UK Department of Health and Social Care. We are also paying close attention to the decisions of and advice from the World Health Organization.
Enhanced monitoring measures have been implemented for flights from Wuhan city to Heathrow. Those will involve each flight being met by a port health team, who will check for symptoms of coronavirus and provide information to all passengers. We are considering whether any further information could helpfully be provided at Scottish airports. Obviously, the situation is evolving and we will monitor it extremely closely. The cabinet secretary for health and sport or I will ensure that parliament is appropriately updated in the days and weeks to come.
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Opening summary
Welcome to our live coverage of the coronavirus outbreak.
In the latest developments, three people in Scotland are being tested for the virus, as the World Health Organization’s emergency committee meets for a second day to decide whether to categorise the outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern.
The head of infection medicine at the University of Edinburgh, Prof Jürgen Haas, said he believed there would be many more cases from other cities in the UK. He said three suspected cases were in Edinburgh and the other was believed to be in Glasgow.
Tests are being carried out and none of the patients have yet been confirmed as having the virus. They all travelled to Scotland from Wuhan in China, where the outbreak is thought to have originated, within the past two weeks and are showing symptoms of respiratory trouble – a red flag for the virus.
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