in full protective suits and dropper
gloves a deep-clean Atlas GP surgery and
Brighton of the four new cases of novel
coronavirus announced today in the UK
two of them are health care workers and
at least one of them is thought to have
been a member of staff at the county oak
Medical Center they have been advised to
isolate themselves public health
officials say they are now working
urgently to identify all patients and
other health care workers who have been
in close contact and this is all about
contact tracing so far all the recent
cases come back to one man a UK
businessman attended a conference in
Singapore before going skiing in France
and then returning to Brighton he tested
positive for novel coronavirus and is
now associated with ten cases in France
Majorca and in the UK the question now
is whether this businessman is a super
spreader not an official term but taken
to mean someone who infects more people
than normal
obviously some people can transmit the
disease they may transmit it because
there are close proximity to lots of
people it doesn't make them a super
spreader and we had to think the
opposite said there are many people have
been in contact with people had the
disease and it's not spread to them so I
think it is too early to say that there
are people spreading it worldwide at the
moment yet today the World Health
Organization said the cases in France
yesterday and the UK today are
concerning because these people have not
travelled to China the detection of this
small number of cases could be the spark
that becomes a bigger fire but for now
it's only a spark our objective remains
containment and today the government
announced new restrictions on any
individual considered by health
professionals to be at risk of spreading
the virus the regulations apply to any
individual seeking to leave supported
isolation before the current quarantine
period of 14 days as complete the PA
news agency reported that one of the 93
people currently in quarantine here in
the world attempted to leave prompting
this tightening of the laws and this
afternoon st. Mary's independent school
in Southampton was closed after some
students who traveled to China developed
coronavirus symptoms they have been put
in isolation confirmed cases outside
China remain low just 319 but inside the
country more than 40,000 patients have
been confirmed with 909 deaths well a
short time ago I spoke to Paul Kozlov
who's the emeritus medical director of
public health England and I began by
asking him what plans were being made in
case the virus begins spreading further
here of course it's early days still in
the course of this infection we're very
clear that at the moment the right thing
to do is to identify everybody early and
to do all that contact tracing to reduce
spread that's where our focus is
at the moment of course we've got a
whole range of contingency plans in
place if something else happens and if
we do get more widespread infection but
that's not the position that we're in at
this stage right but what are the plans
for if it gets much bigger well there's
a whole range of plans that we have from
the point of view of public health
England and the NHS itself will have all
its plans to surge capacity as necessary
if we do see more cases in this country
and if we begin to see people who get
unwell as a result of this novel
coronavirus I should say I mean because
you don't have enough isolation beds do
so what will happen I mean well you have
sort of whole wards or whole hospitals
as the NHS has a whole range of plans by
what are they well there are a number of
phases to those plans the first phase is
to treat people within the existing
capabilities that they have and then
there's a range of phases they will go
through if they need to surge that
capacity and to handle more people so
this is not a serious and imminent
threat so the risk to the UK population
is moderate that's the risk as defined
by the UK chief medical officers it's
important to distinguish the that from
the use of the term serious and imminent
threat which was a legal term that was
used
in order to pass some regulations today
that have been announced to make sure
that if people do need to be in what
we're calling supported isolation for 14
days that they can remain in that
isolation for the 14-day incubation that
we're concerned about that's not to say
that there's a serious in the imminent
threat to widespread infection in the UK
the rate of people dying from this is
about two percent that's much higher
than sort of normal flu which does
obviously kill many people every year if
this does become a widespread infection
in Britain as people are acknowledging
is possible that's an awful lot of
casualties isn't it well there's two
things to say to that one is that the
actual rate of death is still unclear
you're right that roughly two percent is
the current best estimate I think many
people would say that as we understand
the infection more as we see how many
people have been infected but not
identified in China as being infected
that that rate of people who run into
the most severe problems and sadly died
as a result may well become lower than
that and that's why all our efforts at
the moment so to identifying anybody
who's who's come to the the UK and has
the infection quickly and about doing
all the contact tracing that we're doing
and making sure that we're handling all
those contacts of course the fact that
this week that for cases that we've
announced today were all from our list
of contacts does suggest that our
contact tracing that this stages is
working really rather well
well that was Professor Cosford talking
to me earlier joining me now is dr.
Natalie McDermott who's a clinician and
lecture in outbreak Disease Control at
King's College London and well there's
the man in charge saying we've got plans
but being quite coy about what they are
are you convinced that they are on top
of this
yeah I'm convinced that they're on top
of this at the moment yes there's
certainly scale up plans within the NHS
that can be implemented if needed but at
the moment I think as he was saying
we've got very robust contact tracing
methods
and that's apparent because we've
identified these four cases here in the
UK today there were a further five
identified in France over the weekend
and we all we can link all of them back
to the third case in the UK from
Thursday last week these are the sparks
that the w-h-o is talking about when
they talk about you know sparks and
fires we can all come to that image and
it's quite frightening it is quite
frightening but I think that actually I
would interpret the sparks that the w8
show is concerned about more as being
people that are infected and we don't
know
how they became infected right now we
have sources of infection and we can
follow up their contacts and make sure
they are tested and isolated
appropriately in Singapore at the moment
we have a few handful of cases where we
have no idea who their contact was that
is more concerning I mean here obviously
because there's so few cases it's things
like people in Brighton who were worried
about coming into contact with people
who might have gone to this doctor's
surgery which may be affected I mean
what should people be doing should you
know should they be sending their
children to school wearing masks all
those sorts of things what people at
home are wondering yeah so I'm sure that
the doctor in who's related to the
surgery he knew he had had contact with
this individual so at the point at which
this individual tested positive last
Thursday he probably then took measures
to self isolate at that point because
that would have been the advice from
public health England at that time
therefore he probably hasn't had any
contact with patients or his colleagues
since that point so the measures that
are being taken now are really just to
make sure absolutely that the surgery is
now cleaned that anybody who might have
had contact with him is isolated and
they want to trace any patients who may
have seen him faced it so people there
in Brighton shouldn't don't need to be
taking any further precautions than
anyone else in the country is taking at
the moment they don't need to take any
further precautions the best thing that
they can do is regularly wash their
hands if they have travelled on public
transport or been shaking people's hands
and what about travel because the
government is warning about people
coming back from places like Singapore
Hong Kong but I mean all these
travelling hubs just link up with each
other people might fly from Singapore to
Dubai or Istanbul or whatever it might
be should people be wearing masks when
they're getting on airplanes for example
it's half turn this week a lot of people
going on holiday so muck masks are of
limited utility unless you're using the
right type of mask in the right way and
washing your hands all that frequently
whenever you touch it so actually at the
moment Public Health England's advice is
not to wear masks because we don't
really know how effective they are
particularly not the basic surgical
masks that you're seeing is relatively
ineffective in terms of protecting
people now someone's unwell to wear a
mask might be beneficial because it will
limit when they cough and sneeze how far
the spray goes and it will also stop
them covering their mouth with their
hands and then shaking hands with
someone but wearing a mask isn't
necessary it is important if people are
travelling though to follow public
health England advice that if they
return from an affected country they may
need a self isolate for 14 days dr.
McDermott thank you very much indeed