Hundreds of Britons trapped in the Chinese city at the heart of the coronavirus outbreak have been told to contact the embassy by 11am tomorrow if they want to come home as the Government’s landmark evacuation mission today moved one step closer and will happen ‘within days’.
Officials this afternoon claimed an airlift from Wuhan – which has been deserted because of an unprecedented lock down that has trapped millions of people – could happen ‘quickly and with short notice’. Officials are still thrashing out the details with Chinese officials but a chartered flight is expected later this week.
Evacuees are likely to have health checks before they board any plane to the UK and they are expected to be held in quarantine for a fortnight when they return to stop the SARS-like infection – which has struck down more than 4,500 people and killed 106 – spreading on British soil.
US officials announced a similar plan for its landmark evacuation mission, which has already gone ahead. Japan, South Korea, France and Spain have all also announced their intention to rescue their residents from Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province, which has been battered by an onslaught of cases.
British ministers have been accused of dithering in their response to rescuing the estimated 300 ex-pats stranded in Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province. Claims yesterday surfaced that China was blocking the emergency airlift operation, forcing Prime Minister Boris Johnson to insist the Government was doing ‘everything we can’.
Ex-pats stuck in Wuhan have already begged officials to ‘get us out of here’, with one furious Brit describing the situation as an ‘utter p***take’ and others accusing the Government – who revealed it was drawing up plans alongside the US and other international allies – of abandoning them.
In other developments:
- The Department of Health today confirmed almost 100 people have now been tested for the deadly coronavirus in the UK – but all of them have come back as negative
- A British-American dual national was evacuated out of Wuhan on a California-bound chartered plane organised by US officials
- Shocking footage has captured medics in hazmat suits in Birmingham quarantining a suspected coronavirus victim after he was sent home by his GP
A charter plane organised by the Japanese government to evacuate nationals from Wuhan. It is pictured leaving Tokyo’s Haneda International Airport passenger terminal this evening
Japanese officials prepare to load various supplies such as face masks into a charter plane bound for Wuhan at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. The flight is to evacuate Japanese nationals from the Chinese city that has been hit by the outbreak of a new deadly coronavirus
Dual national Ian Thompson told Good Morning Britain that he would ‘stuck here’ if it hadn’t been for his US nationality, saying he is not aware of any attempts by the UK to lift some 300 British ex-pats stranded in Wuhan, described it as a ‘ghost town’ for its empty streets
Graham Hubbard is one of a group of three British scientists confined to their hotel rooms in Wuhan. He blasted the Foreign Office for its ‘confusing’ advice, which came too late for them to plan their own escape
The killer coronavirus outbreak has now killed 106 people and struck down more than 4,500. Cases have been spotted in Canada, US, France and Australia
The US is sending a chartered plane to Wuhan to take Americans stranded in the coronavirus-hit city to Alaska, before another plane diverts them to Ontario City in California
According to the Evening Standard, the British Embassy in Beijing said: ‘Due to the increasing travel restrictions and difficulty accessing medical assistance we are working to make an option available for British nationals to leave Hubei province. This may happen quickly and with short notice.’
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps this morning said the Government is ‘working on’ how to bring people home from the Chinese city. He told BBC Breakfast: ‘For anybody who is there, one of the issues we have, working with our partners internationally on this, is actually identifying how many British citizens there are in Wuhan.
‘One of the things we’re asking people to do is to contact the consulate there to make them aware. People have started to do that. ‘We are working on arrangements as well.’
He added: ‘If they actually contact the consulate where they are then that consulate is in fact gathering together all the information of the people who are there, in order to help repatriate where that’s appropriate.’
It comes after the Chinese partners of US citizens were been banned from a rescue flight to evacuate Americans from Wuhan. A charter flight is scheduled to fly from the Wuhan Tianhe International Airport to Alaska before landing in Ontario, California, where all of the evacuees will be quarantined for at least 72 hours.
While the Foreign Office waits for a green-light to commence the repatriation, it has created a 24-hour helpline for anyone stuck in the coronavirus-ravaged Hubei province.
Dual national Ian Thompson told Good Morning Britain that he would ‘stuck’ in Wuhan if it hadn’t been for his US nationality, telling hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid he was not aware of any attempts by the UK to lift British ex-pats from the empty streets of Wuhan.
Discussing the precautions officials are taking by letting him on the flight, he added: ‘I have to go through two sets of testing. I have to go through the testing once I arrive at the airport through the Chinese authorities, and once I’ve bypassed that one I have to go and be checked by US officials before I board the plane.’
When quizzed about whether the UK had reached out to him, he said: ‘There’s been no official attempts so far, as I’ve been aware or been told.
‘It’s extremely strange, and very scary too. The streets are completely empty, there’s no-one walking around. Everyone’s been told to stay in their houses – there’s no transportation anywhere. All the restaurants, bars and everything are all closed down.
‘If I move from my province to another province area in Wuhan I will automatically get held by police and put into quarantine for 14 days.’
Graham Hubbard is one of a group of three British scientists confined to their hotel rooms in Wuhan. He said the Foreign Office’s advice had been ‘confusing’ and came too late for them to plan their own escape.
The 39-year-old, from Wantage, Oxfordshire, was on a working trip with colleagues when the Chinese authorities blocked transport in and out of Wuhan. His scheduled return flight home was due to take off an hour and a half after the city-wide quarantine came into force last Thursday.
Mr Hubbard and his colleagues, Richard Staunton-Lambert, 49, also from Wantage, and Victoria Sullivan, from Bracknell, Berkshire, are staying at the five-star Renaissance hotel.
He told The Times: ‘We are trapped in our hotel rooms, surrounded by a ghost town with no idea when we can go home to our families and no practical help from our own government, who are giving us contradictory advice.’
The initial advice from the Foreign Office was to stay put and not leave the city until after the travel ban was lifted. But at that time UK officials were not aware of the scale of the outbreak, Mr Hubbard said.
He added: ‘By then it was too late for us to do anything, the flights and trains were cancelled and we were trapped.
‘When I spoke with the Foreign Office today I was told “we can not guarantee anything”. It is very frustrating because we have been given contradictory advice.
‘The Foreign Office website was finally updated at 9am UK time. So nothing happens all weekend until they get back to work on Monday.’
Mr Hubbard had been woken up by his panicked wife at the crack of dawn last Thursday who told him about the travel restrictions.
A paramedic head-to-toe in protective gear directs a man wearing a face mask into an ambulance on a residential street in Harborne
Two other paramedics wearing no protective clothing appear in the video – one appears from behind the ambulance doors (left) and another stands beside the hazmat-clad woman (right)
Thai Airways employees are pictured disinfecting an empty plane cabin at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok today, January 28. Thailand has 14 confirmed coronavirus cases – the most outside of China
Experts say the difficulty of containing the coronavirus is that so many patients have mild, cold-like symptoms and don’t realise they have the infection
He tried to catch the high-speed train to a city three hours away to fly via a different airport, but was refused a ticket. The father then hired a taxi but the roads were so congested that by the time he got to the outskirts of the city roadblocks had been put up.
Bosses in Wuhan have banned the use of cars, meaning motorways and streets are eerily quiet. The hotel where the British scientists are staying have banned communal eating in the dining room because of the increasing risk of new infections.
Guests can collect takeaway meals to eat in their own rooms or order room service. Mr Hubbard’s wife Laura, 39, who is at home with their three children aged four, six and eight, had begged for the British government to help.
It comes after furious Brits yesterday hit out at the Health Secretary to tell travellers from Wuhan to ‘self-isolate’ amid fears the killer coronavirus is spreading between people even if they do not show any symptoms.
In a desperate attempt to prevent an outbreak on British soil, Mr Hancock begged travellers to stay indoors, avoid contact with anyone and ring NHS 111 if they have any symptoms.
Officials are still desperately trying to hunt down the 1,500 people who are still in the UK after landing from Wuhan in the past fortnight.
Mr Hancock told MPs in the House of Commons: ‘Coronaviruses do not usually spread if people don’t have symptoms – but we cannot be 100 per cent certain.
‘From today, we are therefore asking anyone in the UK who has returned from Wuhan in the last 14 days to self-isolate. Stay indoors and avoid contact with other people – and to contact NHS 111. If you are in Northern Ireland, you should phone your GP.
‘If you develop respiratory symptoms within 14 days of travel to the area, and are now in the UK, call your GP or ring 111 informing them of your symptoms and your recent travel to the city. Do not leave your home until you have been given advice by a clinician.’
Passengers arriving at Nanjing Railway Station in China have their temperatures checked by staff who are looking to see if anyone has a high fever, a sign of infection
The above picture shared by China’s National Microbiology Data Center shows the first-ever specimen of the novel coronavirus, known as ‘2019-nCov’, extracted from a patient
The sample, with a serial number ‘NPRC 2020.00001’, was extracted from a patient on January 6, according to China’s National Microbiology Data Center. It is the first 2019-nCov specimen
Security guards stand beside a disaster relief tent in Hunan province, near the border of Hubei where Wuhan is the capital. Photographed today, January 28
Officials have not clarified exactly how patients will be taken to hospital if they complain of symptoms – but it is thought they will be taken in an ambulance and whisked straight off to be isolated while doctors run tests.
Ministers came under immense criticism after Japan said it would send a chartered flight to Wuhan on Tuesday night to evacuate its citizens. Both South Korea, France and Spain are also aiming to fly out citizens this week.
The American flight picked up 240 US citizens in Wuhan to make the 11-hour journey to Anchorage, Alaska, where it will stop over before transporting them to Ontario in California.
UK officials are confirming plans and waiting for permission from Beijing before carrying out the unprecedented repatriation attempt, it was reported.
Senior Foreign Office sources have admitted that keeping Brits in Wuhan ‘could prove to be a death sentence’, given the escalating outbreak which has struck almost 5,000 people.
Officials estimate that up to 200 UK citizens currently in Wuhan will want to return to the UK. If these Britons are flown home by the Foreign Office, health officials will also tell them to ‘self-isolate’ for 14 days.
In other developments last night, Public Health England admitted that the first UK confirmed case is likely to come from somebody already in the country.
When asked about the repatriation operation on Monday, Mr Johnson insisted plans are being worked on to help UK citizens in Wuhan and assured ‘we are doing everything’ to screen people arriving from affected regions.
In an interview at the King’s College London Mathematics School after launching a post-Brexit visa plan, the PM was asked for detail on how frustrated citizens would be assisted.
He replied: ‘We are looking at everything we can to give reassurance to those people in Wuhan and you will be hearing a bit more in due course but I don’t want to pre-empt the decisions we are going to make.
Traffic queues at a checkpoint outside the city of Yueyang in the Hunan province where police and government staff check travellers for illness
Children in Cambodia, which confirmed its first case of coronavirus yesterday, are now wearing face masks at school to stop the virus spreading. Schools in China are still closed
‘Obviously, we are doing everything we can to ensure that people who do come to this country are properly screened and checked if they have come from an area that is known to have the infection. So far there is still no case of somebody with coronavirus here the UK but clearly there are a lot of cases in China and it is spreading.’
But politicians hit back at the lack of news. Shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry told the Evening Standard: ‘Boris Johnson is now failing in the first duty of any government — he is not doing whatever it takes to protect our citizens from harm. They need to get this evacuation sorted now.’
Ed Davey, acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, told MailOnline: ‘Over the weekend I called on the Government to get a grip, look after British citizens properly and prepare to evacuate them from Wuhan, so it is extremely disappointing that ministers are still dragging their feet.’
Former Foreign and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme the government will ‘undoubtedly be looking at’ an airlift, but admitted there will be ‘a lot of logistical issues’.
It comes after Professor Yvonne Doyle, medical director and director of health protection for PHE, said the first UK case is likely to come from somebody already in the country – but she said that ‘we’ve been here before’ by preventing the spread of MERS and SARS, adding ‘we are ready’ to cope with any potential cases.
In an interview with Sky News, she said: ‘Our view is that, although airports are important, the most likely place that we might find a case is somebody in the country already, and it’s absolutely critical that the public health service and the NHS are ready to diagnose that and are able to designate the person to the right facilities. That’s the most likely scenario we are dealing with.’
Professor Doyle said efforts were continuing to trace the 2,000 people who have entered the UK from Wuhan on international flights over the past few weeks. But she added: ‘It’s not always possible to find everybody but we are working to our best endeavours.’
Mr Hunt said he would be ‘very sympathetic’, when asked if he supported flying Britons back from Wuhan. He added that it would be ‘very, very challenging for the NHS’ if cases were to crop up in the UK but accepted that doctors and nurses ‘will do exactly what they need to’.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab ordered officials to examine the exact logistics for an airlift out of Wuhan, it was reported yesterday, Although a source said ‘a number of things need to fall into place on the Chinese side before we can make any firm promises’.
A senior Government source said: ‘It is a fast-moving situation and it requires some tough calls to be made. But the situation is now so bad locally, and the medical system so overstretched, that it could prove to be a death sentence. We need to get people out.’
Demand for action from expats trapped in Wuhan grew louder when China’s own President Xi Jinping admitted his country was facing a ‘grave situation’. Cases of the never-before-seen virus in China have now been confirmed in every province of the country except Tibet.
Men in face masks stand guard at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Colombo, Sri Lanka – the country declared its first coronavirus case yesterday
A China Eastern check-in desk at Incheon International Airport in South Korea is pictured deserted today, January 28. Normally, the Lunar New Year period sees millions of people travel around the Far East to visit family
Many roads in China are being closely monitored – if not closed – by the authorities to stop people transporting the coronavirus around the country. Pictured today, January 28, a man is screened by officials at a checkpoint at the city of Yueyang, Hunan
Volunteers in Qingdao, Shandong, are seen spraying disinfectant into local businesses in a desperate attempt to stop the coronavirus
Two of the expats stranded in the outbreak’s epicentre spoke on This Morning on Monday, saying they are riddled with anxiety as the coronavirus death toll continues to climb. British PE teacher Kharn Lambert, 31, and his visiting 81-year-old grandmother Veronica Theobald have not been outside for a week.
The pensioner, from Lancaster, is too frightened to go out because her debilitating lung condition – chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – means that she may not survive a bout of the deadly coronavirus. ‘She needs about 18 different medicines each day and, if she caught this virus, I’m afraid it would kill her,’ Mr Lambert, 31, said last night.
Mrs Theobald arrived in Wuhan in early December and was due to return to the UK tomorrow but her flight was one of those cancelled when the city was effectively closed off to the world on Thursday. She has just a week’s supply of her vital drugs left.
As Mr Lambert and his grandmother waited anxiously, elsewhere in the city yesterday British expats were exchanging angry messages on social media about the apparent intransigence of the Foreign Office in response to their pleas to ‘get us out of here’.
Other British ex-pats living in Wuhan – home to 11million people – have described the eerie scenes on the streets of a usually bustling city. But the city is reportedly standing together to fight the outbreak, with locals chanting ‘Wuhanjiayou’ – which roughly translates as ‘Wuhan, keep going’.
Chris Hill, a foreign language coach originally from Washington in Tyne and Wear, told the PA news agency he had seen scenes of ‘panic and chaos’ akin to something ‘you would see in a movie’ when shopping at a supermarket in the early stages of the outbreak.
Matthew Heard, a 31-year-old education consultant from London who has lived in Wuhan for the past five years, told The Guardian that the best word to sum up the situation in the city at the moment is ‘confusion’.
He said: ‘There’s a lot of information flying around. There’s posts flying around group chats and no one really knows what’s going on. That’s the main frustration.
‘I’ve been holed up for the last maybe three days. On the first day I started out to the supermarket and got a good few things to keep m tied over for the foreseeable eight or nine days, but I’m going to consider perhaps going out again.
‘I know a few others who are venturing out most days just to go to the shops or to the supermarket to see if they can restock on supplies and things.’
NHS staff have also been briefed on how to handle corpses infected with the lethal Chinese virus after it was revealed it had spread to three locations in France over the weekend.
The dossier published by Public Health England warns that the virus – which has stricken two in Paris and another in Bordeaux – is ‘accelerating’. Five cases of the unnamed coronavirus have now been recorded in both the US and Australia, and Canada announced its first case over the weekend.
PHE’s document obtained by The Sunday Times advises: ‘The act of moving a recently deceased patient onto a hospital trolley for transportation to the mortuary might be sufficient to expel small amounts of air from the lungs and thereby present a minor risk.
A volunteer sprays disinfectant in Qingdao’s residential West Coast area – Qingdao is a coastal city approximately 620miles (1,000km) away from Wuhan
A worker wearing a protective suit sprays disinfectant in an office building in Qingdao in eastern China’s Shandong Province, Tuesday January 28
Medical workers in Guiyang, Guizhou, prepare to head into Wuhan to help with the response to the coronavirus outbreak
‘A body bag should be used for transferring the body and those handling the body at this point should use full PPE [personal protective equipment].’ Furthermore, medics meeting any potentially infected people should wear ‘full-face visors’, while GPs should avoid contact with patients and place them into immediate quarantine.
Despite the strict guidance to try to contain the virus, one British teacher who has spent the last decade in Wuhan fears he may be spreading the virus throughout the UK because he claims he was given the wrong advice by an NHS 111 operator.
David Marland lived just five minutes from the seafood market thought to be at the centre of the outbreak in Wuhan. He told The Telegraph that he called the helpline as soon as he stepped off a plan at Gatwick Airport from Dubai, via Hong Kong and the Chinese city of Shenzhen, last week.
But instead of being hauled in for tests in isolation, the 34-year-old alleges that he was only asked if he had the ‘sniffles’ and to only call back if he began to feel unwell – even though it has since been revealed that patients can be infectious without showing any symptoms.
Mr Marland, from Buckinghamshire, said: ‘I’m potentially a risk to other people. I’m still within the two-week period so I could be spreading the disease everywhere without having any symptoms… Maybe I should be staying away from people, but no one has told me to. They haven’t given me any advice at all. I’m just getting on with my life – what else am I supposed to do?’
He accused the NHS operator of just ‘ticking boxes’ and ‘leaving the door open’ to the killer virus. But NHS sources told The Telegraph that the operator had correctly followed advice – which comes from Public Health England and says to ring if you ‘develop a fever, difficulty breathing or a cough’.
Scientists fear China’s status as a major superpower may have influenced the World Health Organisation’s decision not to declare the coronavirus outbreak as being an international emergency last week, with the UN-body saying it was ‘too early’ for such a decision.
Baffled experts warned the decision may have been influenced by China. Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, told The Daily Telegraph: ‘The criteria for declaring a public health emergency of international concern have been met.’ But ‘not all WHO decisions are made based on the developments in the biological world,’ he added.
It came after a top Chinese health official said that the new virus was becoming more contagious than SARS –from the same family of coronaviruses which killed nearly 650 people across Beijing and Hong Kong in 2003.
Six villages in Hebei – the province surrounding the capital Beijing, where dozens of cases have been confirmed – have taken matters into their own hands and are building brick walls around their street to protect it, Sky News reports
Paramedics wearing hazmat suits arrived at Peppers, on Elizabeth Street, Broadbeach, to reports of a suspected coronavirus case on Tuesday – they are pictured escorting the male patient out to an ambulance
Dr Yvonne Griffiths, 71, from Cardiff, has been posted in Wuhan for three weeks with two colleagues from Birmingham City University. The university had arranged for the English language lecturer and her colleagues to fly back on Monday but there have been no updates on when the airport will re-open.
‘Although there’s been so much in the media about the virus and about the risk of students travelling back and forwards from the UK, there doesn’t seem to be anything about stranded individuals like ourselves,’ Dr Griffiths told the BBC.
‘And it seems maybe the British government has a lack of either concern or lack of planning in place, I’m not sure. I think there’s a lot of uncertainty – that’s what’s frustrating at the moment as much as disappointing.’
Her daughter Bethan Webber said she and her mother were struggling to sleep with the stress of the situation. Dr Griffiths described the streets in Wuhan as ‘completely deserted’ and that she had been advised to remain in the hotel where people are wearing face masks.
British expats are reportedly exchanging angry messages on social media about the apparent intransigence of the Foreign Office in response to their pleas to ‘get us out of here’.
One angry British expat simply told fellow members of a social media chat group: ‘London thinks you’re all dead!’ Another unnamed member of a WeChat group – the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp – stormed: ‘There hasn’t been any engagement with the British citizens in Wuhan by the Foreign Office. It’s an utter p***take that we’re being left here like this.’
France’s health minister Agnes Buzyn yesterday said officials would put ‘hundreds’ of citizens on a direct flight to the country later in the week. She said authorities were working on arranging a bus service to get the expats to the airport.
There are thought to be some 800 French citizens stranded in the Wuhan area. She said French nationals will be held in quarantine for two weeks on arrival to stop the virus spreading on home soil. French car manufacturer Peugeot Citroen, which has a factory in Wuhan, said it was moving foreign employees and their families by bus to be quarantined in another city.
Nurses in India are pictured wearing protective gear as the country is on high alert for potential coronavirus cases – none have been diagnosed there yet
A subway station in Seoul, South Korea, is disinfected by masked workers. More than half a million people in the country have petitioned for visitors from China to be turned away at the border
Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, gave a press conference today while wearing a face mask and announced drastic travel restrictions between the city and mainland China
The US State Department is organising a single flight out of Wuhan tomorrow directly to San Francisco. It said in the event there are not enough seats, priority will be given to to individuals ‘at greater risk from coronavirus’.
Officials invited US citizens with a valid passport to contact the embassy in Beijing. Private citizens are expected to later repay the travel costs, the notice said. There are roughly 1,000 Americans living in and around the Wuhan area.
Japan said it planned to evacuate all of its citizens using chartered flights. It claimed it was in final discussions about the logistics with Chinese authorities. Some 430 Japanese nationals reside in or near Wuhan.
The government is also considering evacuation by road from Hubei Province, and have Japanese nationals take flights home from other places, according to Japanese media.
Spain’s foreign minister Arancha Gonzalez tweeted this morning that Spanish official are trying to evacuate 20 Spaniards stranded in Hubei province. She did not provide further details.
And the Thai government is meeting today to discuss how to evacuate the 70 known expats living in Wuhan, most of whom are students. Air force commander ACM Manat Wongwat said that up to four planes with medical staff are on stand-by to evacuate its citizens in the coming days.
British boarding schools were yesterday advised to be alert to the prospect of Chinese students being racially abused due to the coronavirus outbreak. Guidance issued by the Boarding Schools’ Association suggests they should look out for prejudice towards Chinese students by others – either in person or on social media.
China sends more pupils to UK fee-paying schools than any other country, with latest figures indicating that Chinese children make up around one in six of all international students.
A family travelling near the border of China’s Hubei province, where Wuhan is, have their temperatures taken in their car
On the issue of xenophobia, A BSA spokesperson said: ‘We have not heard of anything happening in our schools, and we don’t envisage it happening in our schools, we are trying to make sure we are covering every eventuality.’
Chinese authorities yesterday released the first pictures of the new strain of coronavirus. China’s National Microbiology Data Centre published images of the infection they extracted from two patients in Wuhan.
And the mayor of Wuhan admitted that his government withheld information about an outbreak from the public. Zhou Xianwang confessed that his team had not released information about the situation ‘timely’.
He also said that the city had seen human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus on a large scale. The revelations came after Mr Zhou yesterday disclosed that around five million Wuhan residents had left the city before it went into lockdown last Thursday. He has offered to resign amid criticism that response to the outbreak came too slowly.
Workers are now four days into their drastic plan to build an entire hospital from scratch in less than seven days – the spontaneous build was ordered on Thursday last week.
Authorities have instructed four construction companies to toil through the Chinese New Year holiday in order to complete the six-acre centre in Caidian District in a week. It is expected to receive its first patients on February 3, according to state media.
Experts tracking the outbreak yesterday said Governments need to implement ‘draconian’ travel curbs to stop the coronavirus outbreak in China becoming a global epidemic.
Scientists at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) presented a briefing warning that the spread of the deadly SARS-like virus that first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan was accelerating.
What do we know about the deadly coronavirus? What are the symptoms… and how worried SHOULD the world really be?
It emerged yesterday that the deadly coronavirus spreading across Asia is far more contagious than previously thought and someone who is infected can spread it with just a simple cough or a sneeze, scientists say.
Twenty-six people with the virus are now confirmed to have died and more than 800 have been infected in at least nine countries. But experts predict the true number of people with the disease could be as many as 10,000 as they warn it may kill as many as two in 100 cases. Here’s what we know so far:
What is the Wuhan coronavirus?
A coronavirus is a type of virus which can cause illness in animals and people. It is an RNA virus (RNA is a type of genetic material called ribonucleic acid), which means it breaks into cells inside the host of the virus and uses them to reproduce itself.
This coronavirus from Wuhan is one which has never been seen before this outbreak. It is currently named 2019-nCoV, and does not have a more detailed name because so little is known about it.
Dr Helena Maier, from the Pirbright Institute, said: ‘Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that infect a wide range of different species including humans, cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and wild animals.
‘Until this new coronavirus was identified, there were only six different coronaviruses known to infect humans. Four of these cause a mild common cold-type illness, but since 2002 there has been the emergence of two new coronaviruses that can infect humans and result in more severe disease (Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronaviruses).
‘Coronaviruses are known to be able to occasionally jump from one species to another and that is what happened in the case of SARS, MERS and the new coronavirus. The animal origin of the new coronavirus is not yet known.’
The first human cases were publicly reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where approximately 11million people live, three weeks ago after medics first started seeing cases in December.
By January 8, 59 suspected cases had been reported and seven people were in critical condition. Tests were developed for the new virus and recorded cases started to surge.
The first person died that week and, by January 16, two were dead and 41 cases were confirmed. The next day, scientists predicted that 1,700 people had become infected, possibly up to 4,500.
Today, just one week later, there have been more than 800 confirmed cases and those same scientists estimate that some 4,000 – possibly 9,700 – were infected in Wuhan alone. There are now 10 countries with confirmed cases and 26 people have died.
Where does the virus come from?
Nobody knows for sure. Coronaviruses in general tend to originate in animals – the similar SARS and MERS viruses are believed to have originated in civet cats and camels, respectively.
The first cases of the virus in Wuhan came from people visiting or working in a live animal market in the city, which has since been closed down for investigation.
Although the market is officially a seafood market, other dead and living animals were being sold there, including wolf cubs, salamanders, snakes, peacocks, porcupines and camel meat.
Bats are a prime suspect – researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a recent statement: ‘The Wuhan coronavirus’ natural host could be bats… but between bats and humans there may be an unknown intermediate.’
And another scientific journal article has suggested the virus first infected snakes, which may then have transmitted it to people at the market in Wuhan.
Peking University researchers analysed the genes of the coronavirus and said they most closely matched viruses which are known to affect snakes. They said: ‘Results derived from our evolutionary analysis suggest for the first time that snake is the most probable wildlife animal reservoir for the 2019-nCoV,’ in the Journal of Medical Virology.
So far the fatalities are quite low. Why are health experts so worried about it?
Experts say the international community is concerned about the virus because so little is known about it and it appears to be spreading quickly.
It is similar to SARS, which infected 8,000 people and killed nearly 800 in an outbreak in Asia in 2003, in that it is a type of coronavirus which infects humans’ lungs.
Another reason for concern is that nobody has any immunity to the virus because they’ve never encountered it before. This means it may be able to cause more damage than viruses we come across often, like the flu or common cold.
Speaking at a briefing yesterday, Oxford University professor, Dr Peter Horby, said: ‘Novel viruses can spread much faster through the population than viruses which circulate all the time because we have no immunity to them.
‘Most seasonal flu viruses have a case fatality rate of less than one in 1,000 people. Here we’re talking about a virus where we don’t understand fully the severity spectrum but it’s possible the case fatality rate could be as high as two per cent.’
If the death rate is truly two per cent, that means two out of every 100 patients who get it will die.
‘My feeling is it’s lower,’ Dr Horby added. ‘We’re probably missing this iceberg of milder cases. But that’s the current circumstance we’re in.
‘Two per cent case fatality rate is comparable to the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 so it is a significant concern globally.’
How does the virus spread?
Information has emerged today, Thursday, suggesting that the illness may spread between people just through coughs and sneezes, making it an extremely contagious infection.
It is believed to travel in the saliva and therefore close contact, kissing and sharing cutlery or utensils are risky. Because it infects the lungs, it is also likely present in droplets people cough up which, when inhaled, can infect the next person.
Originally, people were thought to be catching it from a live animal market in Wuhan city. But cases soon began to emerge in people who had never been there, which forced medics to realise it was spreading from person to person.
There is now evidence that it can spread third hand – to someone from a person who caught it from another person.
What does the virus do to you? What are the symptoms?
Once someone has caught the virus it may take between two and 14 days for them to show any symptoms.
If and when they do, typical signs include a runny nose, a cough, sore throat and a fever (high temperature). The vast majority of patients – at least 97 per cent, based on available data – will recover from these without any issues or medical help.
In a small group of patients, who seem mainly to be the elderly or those with long-term illnesses, it can lead to pneumonia. Pneumonia is an infection in which the insides of the lungs swell up and fill with fluid. It makes it increasingly difficult to breathe and, if left untreated, can be fatal and suffocate people.
What have genetic tests revealed about the virus?
Scientists in China have recorded the genetic sequences of around 19 strains of the virus and released them to experts working around the world.
This allows others to study them, develop tests and potentially look into treating the illness they cause.
Examinations have revealed the coronavirus did not change much – changing is known as mutating – much during the early stages of its spread.
However, the director-general of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, yesterday said the virus was mutating and adapting as it spread through people.
This means efforts to study the virus and to potentially control it may be made extra difficult because the virus might look different every time scientists analyse it.
More study may be able to reveal whether the virus first infected a small number of people then change and spread from them, or whether there were various versions of the virus coming from animals which have developed separately.
How dangerous is the virus?
The virus has so far killed 26 people out of a total of at least 800 officially confirmed cases – a death rate of around three per cent. This is a higher death rate than the Spanish Flu outbreak which, in 1918, went on to kill around 50million people.
However, experts say the true number of patients is likely considerably higher. Imperial College London researchers estimate that there were 4,000 (up to 9,700) cases in Wuhan city alone up to January 18 – officially there have only been 444 there to date. If cases are in fact 100 times more common than the official figures, the death rate may be considerably lower.
Experts say it is likely only the most seriously ill patients are seeking help and are therefore recorded – the vast majority will have only mild, cold-like symptoms. For those whose conditions do become more severe, there is a risk of developing pneumonia which can destroy the lungs and kill you.
Can the virus be cured?
The Wuhan coronavirus cannot currently be cured and it is proving difficult to contain.
Antibiotics do not work against viruses, so they are out of the question. Antiviral drugs can, but the process of understanding a virus then developing and producing drugs to treat it would take years and huge amounts of money.
No vaccine exists for the coronavirus yet and it’s not likely one will be developed in time to be of any use in this outbreak, for similar reasons to the above.
The National Institutes of Health in the US, and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, say they are working on a vaccine based on what they know about coronaviruses in general, using information from the SARS outbreak. But this may take a year or more to develop, according to Pharmaceutical Technology.
Currently, governments and health authorities are working to contain the virus and to care for patients who are sick and stop them infecting other people.
People who catch the illness are being quarantined in hospitals, where their symptoms can be treated and they will be away from the uninfected public.
And airports around the world are putting in place screening measures such as having doctors on-site, taking people’s temperatures to check for fevers and using thermal screening to spot those who might be ill (infection causes a raised temperature).
However, it can take weeks for symptoms to appear, so there is only a small likelihood that patients will be spotted up in an airport.
Is this outbreak an epidemic or a pandemic?
The outbreak has not officially been confirmed as either an epidemic or a pandemic yet. This is likely because, despite the global concern, the number of people who have been confirmed to be infected is still relatively low.
A pandemic is defined by the World Health Organization as the ‘worldwide spread of a new disease’.
An epidemic is when a disease takes hold of a smaller community, such as a single country, region or continent.