1,400 urged to ‘self-isolate’ after returning to UK from virus-hit city
Plane, train and bus links suspended
PEOPLE WHO have returned to the UK from coronavirus-hit Wuhan in China should “self-isolate” even if they have no symptoms, the Health Secretary has said.
In a significant ramping up of precautions in the UK, Matt Hancock said officials could not be 100 per cent certain the virus is not spread by people who are not displaying symptoms.
The move means more than 1,400 people who have returned from Wuhan since January 10 should isolate themselves for 14 days from the date of leaving China.
Ministers have said they are working to get Britons out of Hubei province in China, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisting the Government is doing “everything we can”.
Officials estimate up to 200 UK citizens currently there will want to return to the UK. If they end up being flown home by the Foreign Office, health officials will also tell them to “self-isolate” for 14 days.
If they are unable to stay at home, quarantine facilities will be provided, officials said.
Mr Hancock told MPs in the Commons that he had directed Public Health England to take a “belt and braces approach”.
“Coronaviruses do not usually spread if people don’t have symptoms, but we cannot be 100 per cent certain,” he said. “From today, we are therefore asking anyone in the UK who has returned from Wuhan in the last 14 days to self-isolate.”
Some 1,561 people are now known to have entered the UK from Wuhan since January 10, including airline crew, although some have since left again. Just 10 per cent of these people supplied an email address to the airline and have been contacted with advice on what to do if they feel ill.
Mr Hancock said Public Health England are trying to trace the others. “Having eliminated those who we know have since left the country, there are 1,460 people we are seeking to locate,” he said.
The death toll from the virus in China has risen to 81.
CHINA HAS extended the Lunar New Year holiday in a bid to contain the coronavirus as the death toll rose to 81.
Hong Kong announced it would bar entry to visitors from the province at the centre of the outbreak following a warning the virus’s ability to spread was growing.
Travel agencies have been ordered to cancel group tours nationwide, adding to the rising economic cost of the viral disease.
Increasingly drastic anti-disease efforts began on January 22 with the suspension of plane, train and bus links to Wuhan – a city of 11 million people in central China where the virus was first detected last month.
That lockdown has expanded to a total of 17 cities with more than 50 million people in the most far-reaching disease-control measures ever imposed.
The end of the Lunar New Year holiday, China’s busiest travel season, was pushed back to Sunday from Thursday to “reduce mass gatherings” and “block the spread of the epidemic”, a cabinet statement said.
The government of Shanghai, a metropolis of 25 million peopening
ple and a global business centre, extended the holiday by an additional week within the city to February 9. It ordered sports stadiums and religious events closed.
Tens of millions of people had been due to crowd into planes, trains and buses to return to work after visiting their home towns or tourist sites for the holiday. Schools will postpone reountil further notice, the cabinet said.
The death toll rose on yesterday when the southern island province of Hainan in the South China Sea reported its first fatality, an 80-year-old woman whose family arrived from Wuhan on January 17.
Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, has accounted for 76 of the deaths reported so far. There have been one each in Shanghai and the provinces of Hebei in the north, Heilongjiang in the northeast and Henan in central China.
The spread of the illness is being watched around the globe, with a small number of cases appearing in several other countries.
South Korea has confirmed its fourth case.
Public health officials in Canada said on Monday that the wife of the man who is Canada’s first case of the emerging virus from China has also tested positive for the virus. Ontario said the woman has been in self-imposed isolation since arriving in Toronto with her husband last week.
Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health David Williams said the woman tested positive for the virus at Ontario’s public health laboratory. He said because she has been in self-isolation, the risk to Canadians remains low.