a GP practice in Brighton was closed
temporarily today after a member of
staff tested positive for coronavirus
for new cases of the illness in the UK
were confirmed this morning bringing the
total to eight the government has moved
to ensure that anyone in England who's
in quarantine for the virus can't just
leave by declaring it a serious and
imminent threat to public health here's
our medical correspondent Fergus Walsh
this is not Wuhan but Brighton where an
entire Medical Centre and pharmacy are
being deep cleaned after two local GPs
tested positive for the new corona virus
along with two other people in Brighton
it seems they were all infected in a ski
chalet in France by a British
businessman who dim self got infected in
Singapore without realizing he was
contagious he passed on the virus to
around a dozen Britons all without going
anywhere near 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 the longer this
outbreak goes on the more scientists are
learning about the new coronavirus
latest estimates suggest it kills around
one in a hundred people who are infected
that compares with one in ten people who
died from SARS in 2003 yet even though
the new coronavirus is much less deadly
the death toll has already exceeded that
of SARS now more than 900 compared to
774 for SARS the reason is that this
virus is so mild for huge numbers of
people that unlike SARS most of those
infected never need hospital treatment
and this allows it to spread more
effectively in the community so how bad
could it get if the virus starts
spreading widely in the UK but it's very
hard to know but seasonal flu in England
alone kills between 10,000 and 30,000
people each year most but not all over
the age
sixty-five nearly 200 Britons have been
repatriated from Wuhan since the end of
January and are in quarantine in Milton
Keynes and Merseyside at the weekend
one person threatened to leave arrow
Park Hospital
so emergency regulations have been
brought in allowing forcible detention
but most seem happy with the conditions
there are all sorts of games available
we've obviously got TVs access to the
Internet's Netflix so all these
different things that that are actually
available to us do help to make this
feel not like we're stuck in quarantine
in Wuhan the epicenter of the outbreak
the growth in new cases has started to
slow but it's too early to know whether
this epidemic can be contained President
Xi Jinping shown having his temperature
taken in Beijing promised total warfare
to beat the virus this is one of the
biggest challenges China has faced in
decades and the impact both medical and
economic are being felt around the world
furgus Walsh BBC News