Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Exeter

IN Britain, we are still in the containment phase and do not have sporadic outbreaks of the virus that we are aware of.

We are an affluent nation with an integrated healthcare system – this is our greatest asset.

There is no need to panic but it is a good idea to be well informed and know what to do when and if the virus arrives in the UK.

You can start to practice good hand washing and drying techniques and help to look after your friends and family’s health and wellbeing now.

Rather than worrying, direct your energy towards building up your own understanding of the situation, so you know what to do to protect yourself and others. The best and clearest advice will come from the Government. Do not rely on social media for advice.

We have not seen much onward transmission of the virus within the UK. This is an example of containment working at this point in time.

Our work on resilience planning and emergency preparedness planning is a good investment, but more needs to be done with respect to surge capacity amongst healthcare workers and NHS staffing in general. They work very hard and need slack to be able to work well and maintain morale – this is extremely important.

We want to do all we can to minimise the number of cases and not overwhelm our NHS, to ensure we have the capacity to manage and treat the patients who need hospital care.

This is a new virus, thus there is a lot that we still need to learn about it. We are learning all the time and by learning we may work out how best to treat it or find a vaccine against it.

Covid-19 has been found to be a little more infectious than Influenza as well as appearing to cause slightly more illness, but this is from rough and early data.