Twelve new cases of coronavirus confirmed in Britain. It is the biggest jump in COVID-19 cases the UK has seen in one day. Twelve new cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in England, the chief medical officer says.
Three of the patients caught the coronavirus in the UK – they are known to be contacts of someone who already had it, and were found through contact-tracing, Professor Chris Whitty said.
Another of the patients, from Essex, has not been abroad and it is not clear where they contracted the virus. The eight others caught the virus abroad – six had recently travelled to Italy and two had been to Iran.
The patients who had recently travelled are from London, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Gloucestershire. Another two are from Hertfordshire. The case in Greater Manchester is a person who lives in Bury and was infected while in Italy recently, according to Bury Council and Public Health England.
The 12 new cases join three that were reported yesterday: one from Hertfordshire, one from Gloucestershire and one from Berkshire. One of those three is a staff member at St Mary’s School in Tetbury and another works at Willow Bank Infant School in Woodley. Both schools have said they are carrying out a deep clean.
Burford (Day & Boarding) School in the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire, is among schools to have been temporarily closed after pupils returned from half-term holidays in northern Italy. The new cases bring the total number of confirmed in the UK to 35, including one in Wales and one in Northern Ireland.
Earlier, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that in the event of a widespread outbreak in the UK, all options to contain the virus would be on the table, including banning large events and locking down cities. Health officials are still trying to find out how a patient in Surrey caught the illness in the UK without having travelled abroad.
It comes as the government announced it has a “battle plan” to tackle coronavirus including bringing retired doctors back to work. It is understood new emergency powers will be brought in to give schools, councils and other parts of the public sector powers to suspend laws – including rowing back on health and safety measures like allowing larger class sizes – to cope with a pandemic.
The government is also considering whether to encourage more home working and discourage unnecessary travel.
The strategy is based on its existing contingency plans for responding to a flu pandemic, but has been adapted to take into account the differences with COVID-19. Worst-case-scenario plans show 80% of the population could contract the virus, with up to 500,000 deaths.
Cemeteries and crematoriums have been told to make sure plans are in place to deal with a pandemic.
Fears over coronavirus have sparked a rush on items such as hand gel – and as a result, products usually dispatched within a few days on Amazon are instead being pitched with a delivery date of between several weeks to over a month. Supermarket Tesco has sold out of most of its range of anti-bacterial hand sanitisers online.
Health officials in Scotland are to begin testing people with flu-like symptoms for coronavirus, even if they have not visited affected areas. NHS Lothian has introduced a “drive-through” testing centre at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh. It is for some patients who have been assessed by a specialist team and who have an appointment so they can be tested for the virus in their cars.
On Friday, a British man who was on board a quarantined cruise ship in Japan became the first UK fatality of the coronavirus. Public Health England has concluded more than 11,715 tests so far, and all but 35 have been negative. Expert teams are actively tracing those who have come into contact with a suspected case.
The government has said unless an individual has been contacted already, or has travelled to an affected area, they should be reassured it is not necessary for them to take any further action. Meanwhile, British holidaymakers in lockdown at an outbreak-hit hotel in Tenerife have been cleared to return home if they test negative for the illness.
In other global developments:
- World Health Organisation (WHO) says people over 60 or with long-term illnesses should try to avoid crowded places
- World-famous Louvre art gallery in Paris has shut its doors while staff called a meeting to raise health concerns
- The US and Australia record their first deaths from the virus
- Tokyo marathon goes ahead but is cut from 38,000 to about 200 elite runners
- More than 86,992 confirmed and suspected cases globally, according to Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the outbreak. The university says there have been almost 3,000 deaths.
Source – msn
In other news – Nigerian Pastor Elija Emeka Chibuke who declared war on Coronavirus has been hospitalized in China
Nigerian Pastor Elija Emeka Chibuke who declared war on Coronavirus has been hospitalized in China. Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. Early this week, a Nigerian pastor by name Pastor Elija Emeka Chibuke declared his intentions to travel to China and destroy the deadly coronavirus that has been claiming so many lives across the world especially China.
In humans, coronaviruses cause respiratory tract infections that are typically mild, such as the common cold, though rarer forms such as SARS, MERS and COVID-19 can be…continue reading.
