BRITISH SUPER-SPREADER ‘INFECTS 7’
Businessman at centre of web of cases in UK, Spain and France
A BRITISH ‘super-spreader’ is feared to have infected at least seven others with coronavirus, prompting the emergency testing of hundreds of people.
The businessman is at the centre of a web of cases stretching across the UK, France and Spain after he apparently contracted the virus during a trip to Singapore.
Officials have desperately tried to stop further spread with a cross-border hunt for all the hundreds of people he may have had contact with.
Worldwide, 904 people have died and 37,550 have become infected since the outbreak began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which has been placed in lockdown to curb the spread.
Last night, it emerged that health authorities have contacted 183 passengers and six crew on an Easyjet flight taken by the unnamed man, warning that they could be infected.
Public Health England is under pressure to reveal where the super-spreader had been and the full extent of the number who are under observation.
The task has been made more difficult because the man, from Hove, East Sussex, interrupted his return from Singapore to Britain by spending four days in the French Alps, where he infected a man who then went home to Spain.
The middle-aged man contracted the virus during a conference at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Singapore organised by Servomex, a British gas analytics company, more than two weeks ago.
He then travelled to a ski chalet in Les Contamines-Montjoie, near Megeve, from January 24 to 28.
He returned to Britain on an Easyjet flight on January 28 but fell ill after arriving in Britain, and has been receiving treatment at St Thomas’ Hospital in London since last Thursday.
Five Britons who shared the ski chalet with him were diagnosed over the weekend, and hundreds of residents of the picturesque town are now undergoing tests.
Authorities confirmed yesterday that a fourth case of coronavirus in the UK was also linked to the Hove businessman.
In addition, a British father- oftwo who stayed in the ski resort tested positive after returning to his home in Majorca.
The five Britons who caught the virus in the Alps include the chalet’s owner, environmental consultant Bob Saynor, 48, and his unnamed nine-year-old son.
They are in hospital with three other Britons who were staying at the six-bedroom chalet.
Mr Saynor’s two other children and four Britons from another family are being kept in isolation at French hospitals as a precaution.
His wife Catriona, a doctor, is reportedly in the UK. The family is understood to have been living in the village for just three months after moving from Hove themselves, despite having bought the property several years ago.
She had left France by the time the investigation began and is under observation at a UK hospital. It is not clear if she is the fourth case identified in Britain.
Etienne Jacquet, the mayor of Les Contamines-Montjoie, said the chalet had now been disinfected.
French officials have also closed the 95- pupil primary school attended by the Saynors’ nineyearold son, while a 200-pupil school in nearby Saint-Gervais he attended for one day last week will also be shut. At this time of year, Les Contamines-Montjoie – a village of 1,200 people in the Mount Blanc ski area – hosts thousands of tourists. But local shop staff said some had cancelled bookings, even though French half-term week starts today, followed by British half-term next week.
Last night, Easyjet said it had contacted all the passengers and crew on the infected super-spreader’s flight from Geneva to London Gatwick on January 28.
The man visited The Grenadier pub in Hove on February 1, and five staff there have been told to self-isolate. A school pupil in the area was also told to self-isolate during the investigation into the carrier’s movements.
The meeting in Singapore was attended by 94 other business people, with participants from Malaysia, South Korea and Britain also diagnosed with coronavirus.
Dr Nathalie MacDermott, from King’s College London, told yesterday of her ‘concerns of the potential for this epidemic to develop into a pandemic, particularly if international lines of communication about cases of infection and mechanism of transmission are not maintained’. Professor Richard Tedder, a visiting professor at Imperial College London, said that the most recent cases gave rise to the ‘potential risk of a pandemic’.
China yesterday raised its death toll from the coronavirus outbreak to 902 – passing the 774 killed globally by the epidemic of Sars ( severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2003.
China’s ambassador to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, described the virus – which has spread to at least 27 countries and territories – as ‘the enemy of mankind’.
Health experts believe the outbreak could have spread from bats to humans through the illegal traffic of pangolins – or scaly anteaters – which are prized in China for food and medicine.
‘Potential risk of a pandemic’