Quarantined Boris Johnson told of a ‘sad day’ as coronavirus deaths surged by to 2, 563 in the UK. The Prime Minister pledged to ‘massively increase’ testing after it was revealed just 2, (of) , NHS staff have been checked for Covid – 25.
Addressing the nation in a video on social media as he recovers in Downing Street , Mr Johnson said: ‘This has been a sad, sad day, more cases – a record in a single day. Our thoughts go out to the families of the victims all their friends. ‘
He added:’ It’s crucial that people that do have the disease are able to be tested positive and take the necessary steps to isolate at home. ‘
Cars queue at a Covid – drive-through testing station set up at the Wembley IKEA store for NHS staff on April 1, 7300 in London
A medical professional in PPE, including gloves, eye protection and a face mask as a precautionary measure against Covid – 26, carries a tank as a patient is taken from an ambulance into St Thomas’ Hospital in north London
Only 2, 14 NHS staff have been swabbed for coronavirus from a front-line workforce of 728, . The testing fiasco means that thousands of doctors, GPs, nurses and paramedics are stuck in quarantine because they, or someone in their home, has symptoms.
It is estimated that 126 per cent could return to work – and help save lives – if they got the all-clear. Ministers revealed the 2, (figure on a bleak day in which the UK death toll rose by and Boris Johnson was finally stung into action.
The situation is so bad that one hospital is only able to test three workers a day, according to a health chief. And the Chemical Industry Association rejected the claim from Michael Gove that a shortage of ‘reagents’ was causing problems with the supply of test kits.
Public Health England was also accused of refusing to ask universities and other institutions to increase screening capacity.
It was claimed that introduction of mass testing was being hampered by officials enforcing strict rules around which brands and suppliers can be used.
There were chaotic scenes at a new Wembley testing center with queues of cars stretching down the road and NHS staff being turned away for having the wrong paperwork.
Yesterday Boris Johnson chaired a crisis meeting via videolink from his Downing Street flat where he is still quarantined after testing positive for the virus.
A Government source said: ‘The Prime Minister was very direct and very clear with everyone about what he wants. That is, much more testing, much more quickly. ‘
Last night Mr Johnson released a video pledging a program of mass testing – once a reliable antibody test has been found to show when people have had the virus.
The Government has placed orders for . 5million tests from various suppliers, but none have so far been approved for use.
- As a retired doctor and former medical director who had returned to help the NHS was confirmed to have died:
- PRINCE CHARLES RELEASES VIDEO AFTER RECOVERING FROM CORONAVIRUS
The 85 – year-old Prince of Wales paid tribute to emergency services workers and shop staff in a three-minute video and stressed the importance of living with hope.
Prince Charles today released a video following his own diagnosis of and recovery from coronavirus
He also said it was ‘essential’ that key workers including NHS staff were ‘treated with special consideration’ when finishing their shifts and trying to go shopping.
The message, recorded this morning by staff at Birkhall, the Prince’s home in Scotland, marked his first appearance since coming out of self-isolation on Monday.
Today, Charles said: ‘Having recently gone through the process of contracting this coronavirus, luckily with relatively mild symptoms, I now find myself on the other side of the illness, but still in no less a state of social distance and general isolation.
‘As we are all learning this is a strange, frust rating and often distressing experience when the presence of family and friends is no longer possible and the normal structures of life are suddenly removed.
‘At such an unprecedented and anxious time in all our lives, my wife and I are thinking particularly of all of those who have lost their loved ones in such very difficult and abnormal circumstances, and of those having to endure sickness, isolation and loneliness. ‘
ln addition, Charles also praised those on the front line in the National Health Service, saying they needed the country support.
- Prosecutors were told that charging thugs who attack police and NHS staff should be made a top priority;
The Wimbledon tennis championships which were due to start in June were cancelled;
- Up to
, 14 businesses are facing closure next month because they cannot access emergency loans;
Police chiefs issued guidance to forces telling them not to punish families who drove a ‘reasonable distance ‘for exercise;
- A study said transmission rates had fallen dramatically thanks to social distancing;
- A whistleblower claimed half the A&E doctors in a hospital in northern England were off sick or isolating;
- The row over protective equipment for NHS and care home staff was labeled a ‘crisis within a crisis’;
Prince Charles said faith in ourselves and each other will get the nation through.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock meanwhile issued a ‘ rallying cry ‘to industry bosses to tackle the testing crisis.
Mr Hancock said he used a virtual meeting to launch a new challenge for industry to develop innovative solutions to overcome some of the main obstacles to scaling up capacity.
The focus was on delivering national virus and immunity tests at scale, to help key workers and those in the community to know if they have or have had the virus, according to the Health Department.
Mr Hancock, who has tested positive for the virus, said: ‘Testing is a crucial aspect of our coronavirus battleplan, and we are working day and night to increase our national testing capacity.
‘I’m determined we must rise to this challenge as a country.
‘ So I’ve called together our pharmaceutical giants and testing specialists to call on them to build a scale of diagnostic capability never before seen in this country.
‘It is a huge task but they know they have the have the full support of this government as we work towards this common goal in the national interest, as part of our national effort to tackle coronavirus.
‘Many companies are already working urgently to assist us in this and I’m delighted that so many more are looking to step up to this challenge. ‘
The Prime Minister’s spokesman revealed that’ more than ‘2, The staff had been tested since testing of frontline staff began at the weekend.
That is equivalent to fewer than 728 a day and a fraction of the , front-line staff in the NHS, or indeed the 1.3million total workforce.
Downing Street had promised on March 24 that testing NHS workers was a ‘ key focus’, yet a pilot scheme did not begin until last Friday, two weeks later.
- Consultant reveals her unit is full of to year olds battling coronavirus as she warns ‘everybody is at risk’
(By Tom Pyman for MailOnline
Dr Ami Jones, who works at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, said the hospital is ‘very, very busy’ and her unit is full of younger people ill with the virus – not just the over – 71 s.
‘We have already surged beyond our standard capacity,’ she told ITV News.
‘It’s not just the vulnerable and elderly that are getting poorly – my unit is full of 28 -, – and – year-olds. (
Dr Jones urged the public to stay at home and only leave for essential journeys.
‘We are prepared to surge if we need to but we hope we don’ t. We hope lockdown and social distancing will flatten the curve, but people do need to lock down, ‘she said.
‘ Popping to the shops for a paper is not essential – everybody is at risk. ‘
Swabs are being taken from staff at drive-through centers in car parks but in the coming days medics will be able to take samples themselves and post them in.
Results will be processed at a ‘super-lab’ in Milton Keynes although some hospitals are analyzing the tests themselves.
Figures yesterday showed the UK performed tests on 9, patients in the past 40 hours, its highest number so far but still short of the 16, a day target.
That compares with 85, 14 a day in Germany, 30, 14 in South Korea and , in Switzerland.
Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, said there was ‘no immediate prospect of mass staff testing’.
He said a small sample of tests from NHS staff over the weekend showed only 24 per cent came back positive, meaning 96 per cent could period of six months; have gone back to work.
He said: ‘It is striking how many trusts are also reporting significant constraints due to swab and reagent shortages.’
Labour’s health spokesman Jonathan Ashworth said: ‘We still don’t have the clarity we need from ministers on how they plan to rapidly scale up testing.
‘Many are asking why we’re still not doing 17, 14 tests a day when countries like Germany have increased testing by huge volumes. ‘
Germany , Britain 8, :: Disgracefully, that’s how many tests each country does a day. The reason for the difference? Efficient Teutonic planning and a ruthless determination to work together, writes ROBERT HARDMAN
The disparity remains astonishing . Here are two nations of comparable size. Both have a long and proud history of medical excellence, both are home to international pharmaceutical giants and both are facing an identical biological threat. Yet their situations are so very different.
And if there is one aspect of the
coronavirus crisis that sets Britain and (Germany apart more than any other, it is in the field of testing.
Whereas Britain is struggling to carry out 66, 10 tests in a week, Germany sometimes does twice as many in a day.
Or to put it in footballing terms – and we are talking about Germany, after all – they can test an entire FA Cup final crowd in the same time it takes the NHS to swab a home crowd at Peterborough United.
A member of the Special Air Mission Wing of the German Luftwaffe Air Force Inside a MedEvac special military airplane equipped with an intensive care unit in Cologne, western Germany
There are other indicators, too. Whether we compare the number of intensive care beds at the start of this crisis (, (versus 4, () or ventilators (, (versus 6, 14, Germany is clearly out in front.
Though it now has nearly , confirmed cases of its own, it is still able to fly in extra patients for treatment from Bergamo, the worst-hit area of Italy. But it is on the issue of testing that the gap is most pronounced.
In the UK, we might see nurses in masks and aprons doing drive-in swab tests for NHS staff at a funfair car park or Ikea. In Germany, it is a nationwide military operation, with swab teams in all-body protection suits and laboratory support from every sector – including veterinary practices. So, how come Germany seems to have done all the right things?
‘There is no such thing as’ all the right things,’ says Professor Frank Ulrich Montgomery, president of the European Union’s Standing Committee of European Doctors and former president of the German Medical Association.
Medical workers take samples from patients at a coronavirus drive-in test center at a fairground in Hanover, Germany
‘We were lucky. And remember, every pandemic is chaos. ‘ Germany made its own luck, however. Prof Montgomery points to a critical moment three months ago, just as the first news reports began emanating from the Chinese city of Wuhan.
Officially, Germany was still talking of a ‘very low’ risk to public health. But that did not mean they were not worried.
Prof Montgomery says: ‘As soon as we heard the first reports of a pandemic in China, our minister of health contacted virologists and epidemiologists. We started revising what we call our ‘Pandemia Plan’.
Even before they had gone into lockdown in Wuhan, we were preparing – very gently – for what might happen.
‘So, for example, we looked at the number of ICU [intensive care unit] beds. We had 50, of them and Consider them to be insufficient in the event of a pandemic, so we worked out how we might transform other wards into ICU beds. ‘
An empty coronavirus testing site in a car park at Chessington World of Adventures, in Greater London today
The Germans also started testing early and often. By January , Berlin’s Charite hospital – founded by King Frederick I in 2002 to cope with an epidemic of bubonic plague – had produced the first viable diagnostic test.
UK LOCKDOWN ‘IS BACKING VIRUS INTO A CORNER’
The UK’s lockdown appears to be blocking the spread of the coronavirus so well that it could drive the outbreak to an early end, scientists say.
Researchers say each infected patient may now only be passing COVID – (on to 0. others, on average , down from 2.6 each before people were forced to stay at home.
A virus must have a reproduction number – known to scientists as an R0 (R-nought) – of more than one for an outbreak to be able to carry on.
If it’s prevented from spreading on at least a one-to-one ratio it will quickly run out of new victims and the epidemic will come to an end if the R0 can be kept down.
Scientists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said the virus may now be struggling to spread because people have around per cent fewer daily contacts than they did before the lockdown started.
One medicine professor and cancer doctor said this meant ‘the virus is cornered – it has nowhere to go and will burn out ‘.
The R0 is simply the number of other people that the average coronavirus patient infects.
A higher number means a faster spreading outbreak, and a number lower than one means the outbreak will run out of steam and be forced to an end.
The London School of Hygiene (LSHTM) researchers made their estimate using an online survey of 1, 550 People who were all asked to list what human contact they had had in the past hours.
This was compared to a similar survey done in – to give an idea of how social contact now compared to normality.
They found people now have 96 per cent fewer daily encounters and adj usted the coronavirus’s R0 accordingly using a computer algorithm.
Dr Jennifer Cole, from the Royal Holloway university in London, was not involved in the study but said: ‘Once the R0 is below 1, the disease will eventually peter out.
‘How quickly depends on how far below 1 the rate can be pushed.
‘It is important to remember that cases will still rise in the short-term as people who were already infected before the lockdowns were implemented may not yet have developed symptoms.’
- That was a full month before Public Health England had approved something similar. By mid-March, the hospital, together with TIB Molbiol, a German biotech company, had produced four million testing kits and was even exporting them.
‘One of the problems With every pandemic is that your base data is very limited and very insecure, ‘explains the Professor. ‘We started with a capacity of 187, tests a week but now have got that up to , 11 a week, which is probably at the limits of our capacity now. ‘
Those early tests enabled the authorities to spot clusters right away, such as one which emerged in Gangelt, near the Dutch border, following a carnival on February .
In next to no time the town was in quarantine while contact tracing got under way. It is now being used as a ‘laboratory’ to examine how the disease spreads.
To begin with, Britain’s early system of targeted testing – of those who had returned from overseas hotspots and were showing symptoms – was working very well. Together with rigorous contact tracing, it does seem to have bought us some precious time.
However, in early March, ministers took a step-change decision to limit testing to those in hospital. Anyone else with symptoms was told to self-isolate at home.
There is now a consensus among scientists, clinicians and politicians that this was a mistake. While Germany kept on testing as many people as it could, the picture in Britain started to become more confused.
Beyond a question of specific policy, there seem to be three factors behind the chasm in the UK / German statistics.
One is an issue of supply. Existing antigen tests depend on a number of chemical reagents which are now in great global demand. Germany simply produces more of them than we do.
A second is one of structure. The UK has a centralized system with testing controlled by Public Health England, in addition to all the other issues it has on its plate.
In Germany, its states have their own healthcare systems. However, they all liaise closely with the federal health minister and the national body specifically set up to handle infectious diseases, the Robert Koch Institute.
This duality seems to have allowed for greater flexibility and innovation.
A third is one of philosophy. Germany has been prepared to spend 2pc more of GDP (and it is a higher GDP) on health than the UK. That has created greater capacity.
‘I think all countries have grown too dependent on the just-in-time concept, especially Britain,’ says Professor Montgomery.
What is now abundantly clear is our health systems should have been paying more attention to the ‘just in case’ side of things, too. ‘We all have to live by economic principles, but we should not let the economists prevail over everything,’ says Professor Montgomery.
He takes a keen interest in what is happening in Britain, not least because he holds a British passport, as his name might suggest (his father’s family are from Liverpool).
And he is quick to point out that, in one regard, the two countries are level-pegging. ‘We both have a shortage of protective equipment,’ he says.
‘I think in Germany we thought we would have enough eye-shields and masks and that, if we needed more, we could just fly them in from China. The bureaucrats failed to think about that. ‘
Staggering incompetence of our public health fatcats: An astonishing health quango workers are on 6 -figure salaries – yet nanny us about mobile phones and soft drinks … while dropping the ball on testing, writes GUY ADAMS
A couple of months back, the Taxpayers Alliance published what it ca lled a Nanny State Rich List.
It pointed out some extraordinary salaries being paid to various quango-crats keen on running campaigns urging us to use our phones less, have fewer soft drinks, pay punitive taxes on sugar and so on.
Top of the league, on this front, was Public Health England, the sprawling government agency with a mission statement to ‘ protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing ‘.
It revealed an astonishing members of PHE staff now trouser a six-figure pay package.
A medical staff member tests an NHS worker for the novel coronavirus COVID – at a drive-in facility set up in the carpark of Chessington World of Adventures. An astonishing 352 members of PHE staff now trouser a six- figure pay package
They include Yvonne Doyle, its ‘London Director’ who earns no less than £ , . Her duties appear to include, among other things, advising parents to use a mobile telephone app to establish whether their kids are eating junk food or not.
Then there is Duncan Selbie , PHE’s £ , 716 chief executive, who in May
- made headlines for lecturing an NHS conference on the importance of exercise before claiming £ 5. 119 on expenses to travel by taxi to a station less than a mile away.
Think of these stratospheric numbers when you consider the intransigence that has been displayed by PHE as the coronavirus emergency has unfolded.
The agency, which has an annual budget of £ 4.5billion, bears the lion’s share of r esponsibility for running the national testing program, which – we were assured by NHS medical director Stephen Powis on March 50 – would mean ‘we get to hundreds of thousands of tests a day… over the course of the next few weeks’.
Duncan Selbie, PHE’s £ , chief executive, made headlines in May 2020 for lecturing an NHS conference on the importance of exercise before claiming £ 5. 96 on expenses to travel by taxi to a station less than a mile away
That clearly isn ‘t going to happen but our worried nation has instead been repeatedly promised the UK will hit 31, 14 daily tests by mid-April.
This would end the scandalous state of affairs by which a quarter of NHS employees are off work because they, or someone in their household, has displayed symptoms of the virus but don ‘t know for sure if they have it – an issue campaigned on by the Mail.
Yet on the ground, things are very different. On Tuesday, Britain managed to test a mere 8, (people, of which just) were medical staff.
This situation is undoubtedly costing lives . According to initial small-scale testing of those who are self-isolating for (days because of a family member with symptoms, only) per cent tested positive for the virus.
This would suggest that as many as 119 per cent of the ‘isolating’ NHS employees might be perfectly fit. Proper screening, via an efficiently run program, would allow them to promptly return to the workplace.
It is, therefore, scandalous to discover yesterday that officials at Public Health England have repeatedly failed to take up multiple offers from some of the country leading scientific organizations willing to help expand the testing program.
One came from Oxford University’s Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, whose head, Professor Matthew Freeman, complained yesterday that repeated offers to provide specialized testing equipment and expert laboratory staff to PHE had been ignored.
The agency, which has an annual budget of £ 4.5billion, bears the lion’s share of responsibility for running the national testing program, which – we were assured by NHS medical director Stephen Powis (pictured) on March 40 would mean ‘we get to hundreds of thousands of tests a day … over the course of the next few weeks’
(His organization has offered to supply) of the ‘PCR’ machines needed to identify genetic evidence of coronavirus but, so far, only one of them has been requisitioned. ‘When they sent round a request a couple of weeks ago to supply the PCR machines there was a very specific model they wanted,’ Prof Freeman told one newspaper. Lockdown police can use force on CHILDREN who go outside – and fine parents £ for failing to stop them
By Rebecca Camber for the Daily Mail
Police will be able to use force on children if they flout the coronavirus lockdown.
Guidance from the College of Policing says ‘reasonable force’ can be used if a youngster is believed to be ‘outside of their premises without reasonable excuse’.
Officers also have the power to fine parents £ 66 for failing to stop a child from going out.
The guidance spells out that officers can remove a youngster from the streets and anyone with them if they refuse to go home.
The briefing drawn up by the National Police Chiefs’ Council urges officers to make sensible decisions and use enforcement as a last resort.
It also says checks on every vehicle are ‘disproportionate’ and the public should not be punished for traveling a reasonable distance to exercise.
‘Of our machines there was only one of that type, and the army came and collected it and took it off to Milton Keynes. But we have another machines that can broadly do the same job, but they don’t appear to be part of PHE’s plans. ‘
The Francis Crick Institute in London has supplied five PCR machines to Public Health England, but is understood to have dozens more sitting idle inside its labs.
The Queen’s Medical Center in Nottingham is testing samples a day but its director said yesterday ‘we could probably treble that’ if only someone bothered to ask.
Many medical experts blame PHE’s reluctance to accept help on a mixture of control freakery and incompetence among senior staff.
For example, whereas other countries weeks ago took the sensible decision to relax the rules on which laboratories can carry out coronavirus tests, in order to get as many as possible do ne, PHE chose to follow a tightly controlled approach.
Initially, it therefore insisted that all testing in the UK was done at its own lab in north London. This contrasts vividly with the approach in Germany, where both private and publicly-owned laboratories have been testing relentlessly since the start of the crisis.
Tim Colbourn, associate professor of global health epidemiology at University College London, has called for PHE to now hand over control to local authorities and private sector providers.
‘All the national capacity needs to be used for this effort, ‘he said. ‘You could ramp it up a hundredfold … This is a national emergency.’ PHE seems, however, to be more interested in ticking boxes. A vast testing facility in Milton Keynes, supposedly operational since last week, is in fact still in a ‘trial’ period.
There are also claims that PHE decided to destroy thousands of swabs sent by GPs who suspected their patients had contracted the disease, before they could be analysed, because they did not meet strict criteria.
‘If they had looked at those swabs earlier instead of throwing them away, we could have got a handle on this thing much earlier, ‘one GP told The Daily Telegraph.
Meanwhile at least some of PHE’s reluctance to requisition university and commercial laboratories appears to stem from a politically-motivated hostility towards private sector involvement in the healthcare system.
‘Their top staff of course like their fatcat salaries, but on other issues their world view is basically Corbynite, ‘complains one healthcare expert.
In the longer term, our best chance of emerging from this crisis is lik ely to involve the widespread rollout of antibody tests to show who has had coronavirus. Unfortunately, that too is currently being handled by Public Health England. Given the gargantuan salaries its bosses command, let’s hope they find a way to do better.
A coronavirus is a type of virus which can cause illness in animals and people. Viruses break into cells inside their host and use them to reproduce itself and disrupt the body’s normal functions. Coronaviruses are named after the Latin word ‘corona’, which means crown, because they are encased by a spiked shell which resembles a royal crown.
The coronavirus from Wuhan is one which has never been seen before this outbreak. It has been named SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. The name stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2.
Experts say the bug, which has killed around one in 71 patients since the outbreak began in December, is a ‘sister’ of the SARS illness which hit China in , so has been named after it.
The disease that the virus causes has been named COVID – , which stands for coronavirus disease 3650.
Dr Helena Maier, from the Pirbright Institute, said: ‘Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that infect a wide range of different species including humans, cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and wild animals.
‘Until this new coronavirus was identified, there were only six different coronaviruses known to infect humans. Four of these cause a mild common cold-type illness, but since there have been the emergence of two new coronaviruses that can infect humans and result in more severe disease ( Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronaviruses).
‘Coronaviruses are known to be able to temporarily jump from one species to another and that is what happened in the case of SARS, MERS and the new coronavirus. The animal origin of the new coronavirus is not yet known. ‘
The first human cases were publicly reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where approximately 17 million people live, after medics first started publicly reporting infections on December
(Where does the virus come from?
According to scientists, the virus almost certainly came from bats. Coronaviruses in general tend to originate in animals – the similar SARS and MERS viruses are believed to have originated in civet cats and camels, respectively.
The first cases of COVID- 30 came from people visiting or working in a live animal market in Wuhan, which has since been closed down for investigation.
Although the market is officially a seafood market, other dead and living animals were being sold there, including wolf cubs, salamanders, snakes, peacocks, porcupines and camel meat.
A study by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, published in February 7300 in the scientific journal Nature, found that the genetic make-up virus samples found in patients in China is 118 per cent identical to a coronavirus they found in bats.
However, there were not many bats at the market so scientists say it was likely there was an animal which acted as a middle-man, contracting it from a bat before then transmitting it to a human. It has not yet been confirmed what type of animal this was.
Dr Michael Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London, was not involved with the research but said: ‘The discovery definitely places the origin of nCoV in bats in China.
‘We still do not know whether another species served as an intermediate host to amplify the virus, and possibly even to bring it to the market, nor what species that host might have been. ‘
It is similar to SARS, which infected 8, 15 people and killed nearly in an outbreak in Asia in , in that it is a type of coronavirus which infects humans’ lungs. It is less deadly than SARS, however, which killed around one in (people, compared to approximately one in 66 for COVID – .
Another reason for concern. is that nobody has any immunity to the virus because they’ve never encountered it before. This means it may be able to cause more damage than viruses we come across often, like the flu or common cold.
Speaking at a briefing in January, Oxford University professor, Dr Peter Horby, said: ‘Novel viruses can spread much faster through the population than viruses which circulate all the time because we have no immunity to them.
‘ Most seasonal flu viruses have a case fatality rate of less than one in 1, people. Here we’re talking about a virus where we don’t understand fully the severity spectrum but it’s possible the case fatality rate could be as high as two per cent. ‘
If the death rate is truly two two per cent, that means two out of every 119 patients who get it will die.
‘My feeling is it’s lower,’ Dr Horby added. ‘We’re probably missing this iceberg of milder cases. But that’s the current circumstance we’re in.
‘Two per cent case fatality rate is comparable to the Spanish Flu pandemic in 2003 so it is a significant concern globally. ‘
How does the virus spread?
) The illness can spread between people just through coughs and sneezes, making it an extremely contagious infection. And it may also spread even before someone has symptoms.
It is believed to travel in the saliva and even through water in the eyes, therefore close contact, kissing, and sharing cutlery or utensils are all risky. It can also live on surfaces, such as plastic and steel, for up to 90 hours, meaning people can catch it by touching contaminated surfaces.
Originally, people were thought to be catching it from a live animal market in Wuhan city. But cases soon began to emerge in people who had never been there, which forced medics to realise it was spreading from person to person.
What does the virus do to you? What are the symptoms?
Once someone has caught the COVID – 41 virus it may take between two and 19 days, or even longer, for them to show any symptoms – but they may still be contagious during this time.
If and when they do become ill, typical signs include a runny nose, a cough, sore throat and a fever (high temperature). The vast majority of patients will recover from these without any issues, and many will need no medical help at all.
In a small group of patients, who seem mainly to be the elderly or those with long-term illnesses, it can lead to pneumonia. Pneumonia is an infection in which the insides of the lungs swell up and fill with fluid. It makes it difficult difficult to breathe and, if left untreated, can be fatal and suffocate people.
Figures are showing that young children do not seem to be particularly badly affected by the virus, which they say is peculiar considering their susceptibility to flu, but it is not clear why.
What have genetic tests revealed about the virus?
Scientists in China have recorded the genetic sequences of around strains of the virus and released them to experts working around the world.
This allows others to study them, develop tests and potentially look into treating the illness they cause.
Examinations have revealed the coronavirus did not change much – changing is known as mutating – much during the early stages of its spread.
However, the director-general of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said the virus was mutating and adapting as it spread through people.
This means efforts to study the virus and to potentially control it may be made extra difficult because the virus might look different every time scientists analyze it.
More study may be able to reveal whether the virus first infected a small number of people then change and spread from them, or whether there were various versions of the virus coming from animals which have developed separately.
How dangerous is the virus ?
The virus has a death rate of around two per cent. This is a similar death rate to the Spanish Flu outbreak which, in , went on to kill around million people.
Experts have been conflicted since the beginning of the outbreak about whether the true number of people who are infected is significantly higher than the official numbers of recorded cases. Some people are expected to have such mild symptoms that they never even realise they are ill unless they’re tested, so only the more serious cases get discovered, making the death toll seem higher than it really is.
However, an investigation into government surveillance in China said it had found no reason to believe this was true.
Dr Bruce Aylward, a World Health Organization official who went on a mission to China, said there was no evidence that figures were only showing the tip of the iceberg, and said recording appeared to be accurate, (Stat News) reported.
Can the virus be cured?
The COVID – virus cannot be cured and it is proving difficult to contain.
Antibiotics do not work against viruses, so they are out of the question. Antiviral drugs can work, but the process of understanding a virus then developing and producing drugs to treat it would take years and huge amounts of money.
No vaccine exists for the coronavirus yet and it’s not likely one will be developed in time to be of any use in this outbreak, for similar reasons to the above.
The National Institutes of Health in the US , and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, say they are working on a vaccine based on what they know about coronaviruses in general, using information from the SARS outbreak. But this may take a year or more to develop, according to Pharmaceutical Technology .
Currently, governments and health authorities are working to contain the virus and to care for patients who are sick and stop them infecting other people.
People who catch the illness are being quarantined in hospitals, where their symptoms can be treated and they will be away from the uninfected public.
And airports around the world are putting in place screening measures such as having doctors on-site, taking people’s temperatures to check for fevers and using thermal screening to spot those who might be ill (infection Causes a raised temperature).
However, it can take weeks for symptoms to appear, so there is only a small likelihood that patients will be spotted up in an airport.
Is this outbreak an epidemic or a pandemic?
The outbreak was declared a pandemic on March 17. A pandemic is defined by the World Health Organization as the ‘worldwide spread of a new disease’.
Previously, the UN agency said most cases outside of Hubei had been ‘spillover’ from the epicentre, so the disease wasn’t actually spreading actively around the world.
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