Schools hit by coronavirus fears could reportedly be forced to close for two months if the outbreak gets worse.
The warning came from England's chief medical officer who also said that coronavirus could lead to the cancellation of large public events.
According to Manchester Evening News , Professor Chris Whitty has warned of the "social cost" of coronavirus while speaking at the Nuffield Trust summit.
He told health professionals that onward transmission between people in the UK was “just a matter of time in my view”.
He said: “If this becomes a global epidemic then the UK will get it, and if it does not become a global epidemic , the UK is perfectly capable of containing and getting rid of individual cases leading to onward transmission.
“If it is something which is containable, the UK can contain it. If it is not containable, it will be non-containable everywhere and then it is coming our way.”
He said the UK may have to close schools "for quite a long period of time" if it gets to that stage.
“One of the things that’s really clear with this virus, much more so than flu, is that anything we do we’re going to have to do for quite a long period of time, probably more than two months,” he said.
“The implications of that are non-trivial, so we need to think that through carefully.
“This is something we face as really quite a serious problem for society potentially if this goes out of control.”
The news come as two more people were confirmed to have Covid-19 in England today.
One of the new cases – a parent at a Buxton primary school in Derbyshire – contracted the virus in Tenerife, where 168 Britons are being kept in a hotel on the south west of the island.
The other contracted the virus in Italy, which has become the worst affected country in Europe with more than 400 cases and 14 deaths.
Both patients are now being treated at specialist facilities.
So far in the UK, 7,690 people have been tested for the virus and of the 15 to have tested positive, eight have so far been discharged from hospital.
In Merseyside, a number of school pupils and teachers are in self-quarantine after visiting areas hit badly by the outbreak.
Globally, Denmark was among those countries confirming their first cases on Thursday, while Saudi Arabia has stopped Muslim pilgrims entering to worship at the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
In Japan, all schools will close for several weeks, while US experts have reported the first case of unknown origin, which suggests the virus is spreading there.
In China, where the virus originated, 78,497 cases have been reported, including 2,744 deaths.
