Do not travel to China, Foreign Office advises
The Foreign Office last night urged Britons not to travel to China as it fought to contain the coronavirus. Britons were advised to avoid all but essential travel as China itself imposed stronger restrictions on movement, and those already in China were told to “consider making plans before any further restrictions were imposed”. It came as health officials tried to trace 1,500 more people who have flown into Britain from Wuhan in the past fortnight and may be infected.
Sarah Knapton
Laura Donnelly
THE Foreign Office last night urged Britons not to travel to China as the country struggled to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Britons were advised to avoid all but essential travel as China itself imposed stricter freedoms on movement.
British nationals already in China were also advised to “consider making plans before any further restrictions may be imposed”. Only Hong Kong and Macau were exempt from the advice.
Health officials were trying to trace another 1,500 people who flew in from Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak, in the past fortnight as the first of the British citizens still in China were expected to be brought home tomorrow.
Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, said: “Due to increasing travel restrictions and public health situation, we now advise against all but essential travel to China. UK government is urgently working to finalise arrangements for an assisted departure for Hubei Province for British nationals this week.”
Yesterday NHS medics in hazmat suits were filmed at the home of a suspected coronavirus patient who developed flu-like symptoms after returning from Wuhan. The man, named locally as Drew Bennett, 39, a sales worker, was isolated at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, after telling his GP that he was too unwell to leave his bed.
He returned to Britain on Dec 31, days after the first cases in Wuhan were reported, and was undergoing tests.
Meanwhile, British researchers calculated that London was at greater risk from coronavirus than any other city in Europe and warned that cases were likely to emerge shortly.
Experts from Southampton university mapped travel patterns from 18 cities in China, including Wuhan, over a similar three-month period including the Chinese New Year from 2018.
They found one in 100 people leaving the 18 most infected cities in China were likely to end up in London, the only European city to enter the world’s top 20 most-at-risk cities, ranking at 19. Paris was 27th on the list, with Frankfurt 30th. So far 97 tests carried out on people suspected of having coronavirus in Britain have proved negative.
Dr Shengjie Lai, lead author for Southampton’s geography and environmental science department, said in his report: “We may see cases in the next couple of weeks in the UK.” Chinese authorities believe that more than five million people had already left Wuhan before cordons were set up.
The report, published on the university’s Worldpop website, found that Bangkok was most at risk from the spread of the virus. Sydney, Melbourne, New York and Los Angeles were also in danger. Researchers reported that Britain was among the most at-risk countries as a total of 190,000 travellers were expected to arrive over the threemonth period.
On Tuesday, the first cases of coronavirus in people who had not been to China were reported in Germany, Vietnam and Japan, showing that the infection was passing from person to person outside the initial outbreak zone.
The Vietnamese case was a man who had been in contact with his sick father, who had recently returned from China. The Japanese case was a bus driver who had driven Chinese tourists, while the German case resulted from a worker attending a training event with a Chinese woman who had not realised that she was infected.
Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School, said: “The German case is the most worrying because if the Chinese woman was indeed asymptomatic it would confirm the reports of spread before symptoms develop.”
‘We may see cases in the next couple of weeks in the UK’