FIVE SCHOOLS ON INFECTION ALERT
Parents warned over outbreak in Brighton as Scout leader revealed as UK super-spreader
FIVE schools in one city issued coronavirus warnings to parents after a local scout leader was revealed to be the British ‘superspreader’ of the disease.
Stephen Walsh, 53, broke his silence after discovering he was the source of an extraordinary web of cases stretching across the UK and Europe.
Speaking from an NHS isolation room, the sales executive yesterday revealed he had ‘fully recovered’ and insisted he acted as quickly as possible once he realised the threat he posed.
It comes as the number of people tested for coronavirus in Scotland doubled in 48 hours. Scottish Government figures published yesterday show 82 people have been tested – all with negative results.
This is up from 41 tests on Sunday and 57 on Monday, and follows testing labs being set up at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
Meanwhile, in Mr Walsh’s home city of Brighton and Hove, two GP surgeries have been closed and a nursing home was yesterday placed in lockdown as a precaution.
One of the largest secondary schools in Brighton told parents a ‘member of its community’ was in quarantine because of suspected coronavirus contact. Varndean School, which has around 1,300 pupils, was one of the schools in the city to announce that somebody connected to it had been told by NHS chiefs to ‘self-isolate’ for 14 days.
Parents at Cottesmore St Mary’s Catholic Primary School in Hove told of their shock after learning two pupils – thought to be Mr Walsh’s children – were in quarantine.
Mr Walsh, a cub scout leader and father of two from Hove, contracted the virus after travelling to a business conference in Singapore in mid-January. But after almost two weeks of carrying the virus, authorities discovered he was linked to at least 11 cases in the UK, France and Spain.
Yesterday, authorities were still tracking the contacts of Mr Walsh and his five associates – including two GPs – who have also tested positive in the Brighton area over the past few days.
One of the two infected GPs also worked at the A&E unit at Worthing Hospital in West Sussex, which was last night contacting patients and staff to tell them what precautions to take.
The doctor, who has not been identified, treated a ‘small number’ of patients at the hospital on
February 4 and 5 before they became unwell and ‘self-isolated’.
During Mr Walsh’s 6,736-mile journey home from Singapore, he stopped in the French Alps for a four-day ski holiday, with several of his associates on the trip since testing positive.
He contacted his GP, the NHS’s 111 helpline and Public Health England as soon as he realised he may have encountered the virus at the conference. He said: ‘I was advised to attend an isolated room at hospital, despite showing no symptoms, and subsequently selfisolated at home as instructed.
When the diagnosis was confirmed, I was sent to an isolation unit in hospital, where I remain, and, as a precaution, my family was also asked to isolate themselves.’
He has been treated at St Thomas’ Hospital in London since his case was confirmed last Thursday.
He is an employee of Servomex, a British gas analytics firm that organised the conference in the Grand Hyatt hotel in Singapore where he and employees in other countries contracted the virus.
After returning home to the UK on January 28, Mr Walsh was told to work from home by his company
over then-unfounded concerns about the virus’s circulation at the conference.
But he is understood to have gone about his everyday life as normal until February 3, when the company found out that one of the conference’s 94 attendees had contracted the virus.
The cases related to Mr Walsh have prompted authorities to hunt for all those who may have come into contact with him and the other carriers.
Nearly two-thirds of the global population could be infected with the virus if it is not properly controlled, an expert has warned.
Professor Gabriel Leung, chairman of public health medicine at Hong Kong University, based his claim on figures which show the average infected person transmits the virus to 2.5 other individuals.