LONDON is at greater risk of coronavirus than any other city in Europe, scientists warned.
The number of Chinese visitors who flock to Britain every year has put the city on the front line in the battle against the killer infection, according to new research.
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More than 142,000 tourists arrive in London from China between January and the middle of March every year.
Experts at Southampton University have measured the potential global spread of coronavirus for the first time.
They found the UK was the most “at-risk” nation on the continent – ahead of Italy and China’s neighbour Russia.
Globally it was ranked 17th, after USA at number 6 and Australia in 10th place.
Thailand topped the list of countries most at risk.
Predictions
The findings are based on the number of air travellers predicted to arrive from the worst affected cities in mainland China.
Paris was 27th on the list and Frankfurt was 30th – despite cases having been confirmed in France and Germany already.
Professor Andrew Tatem, director of the university’s health project called WorldPop, said: “It’s vital we understand patterns of population movement – both within China and globally – in order to assess how this new virus might spread domestically and internationally.
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“By mapping these trends and identifying high-risk areas, we can help inform public health interventions, such as screenings and healthcare preparedness.”
His team found Thailand’s capital Bangkok is currently the city most at risk from a global spread of the virus.
Hong Kong is second followed by Taipei in Taiwan. Sydney comes 12th and New York 16th.
The most “at-risk” countries or regions worldwide are Thailand with Japan second and Hong Kong third.
Five people in the US are battling the virus but none have yet been confirmed in the UK.
Tracking travellers
Prof Tatem and colleagues used anonymous mobile phone and IP address data from 2013 to 2015 along with international air travel information from 2018.
This enabled them to understand typical patterns of movement of people within China, and worldwide, during the annual 40-day Lunar New Year celebrations – including the seven day public holiday from 24 to 30 January.
From this, 18 Chinese cities – including Wuhan – were identified as being at high-risk from coronavirus.
The volume of air passengers likely to be travelling from these cities to global destinations over a three month period was also established.
From there, the team could then rank the top 30 most at-risk countries and cities around the world.
The analysis is based on ‘non-outbreak’ travel patterns.
But a high proportion of people travelled with symptoms at an early stage of the outbreak – before restrictions were put in place.
In fact, travel cordons are likely to have only coincided with the latter stages of peak population numbers leaving Wuhan for the holiday period.
According to Wuhan authorities it is possible that more than five million people had already left the city by the time the the travel ban was put in place.
In the weeks leading up to it, Chinese tourists flew across the world for Lunar New Year holidays.
At the same time, the number of patients struck with the virus soared.
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Lead author Dr Shengjie Lai said: “The spread of the new coronavirus is a fast moving situation and we are closely monitoring the epidemic in order to provide further up-to-date analysis on the likely spread, including the effectiveness of the transport lockdown in Chinese cities and transmission by people returning from the Lunar New Year holiday, which has been extended to 2 February.”
The UK’s Department of Health has confirmed almost 100 people have now been tested for the deadly coronavirus.
All of them have come back as negative, but Public Health England believes the virus is already in the UK.
So far, the virus has spread to some 17 countries or territories outside of mainland China but experts said they expect the global infections to continue.
The research comes as European and American citizens stranded in Wuhan, the Chinese city at the centre of the outbreak, wait to be rescued by officials scrambling to put escape flights in motion.
Wuhan has been under lockdown along with several other cities in the Hubei province for almost a week.
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Where did coronavirus start? From bats to snakes – the theories on deadly virus’ origins
The killer coronavirus was spread from bats to snakes to humans, experts have claimed.
An outbreak of the virus is understood to have started at an open air fish market in the Chinese city of Wuhan – which has since been put in lockdown after 25 people died and more than 600 people were infected globally.
A new study published in the China Science Bulletin this week claimed that the new coronavirus shared a strain of virus found in bats.
Previous deadly outbreaks of SARS and Ebola were also believed to have originated in the flying mammal.
Experts had thought the new virus wasn’t capable of causing an epidemic as serious as those outbreaks because its genes were different.
But this latest research appeared to prove otherwise – as scientists scrabble to produce a vaccine.
In a statement, the researchers said: “The Wuhan coronavirus’ natural host could be bats … but between bats and humans there may be an unknown intermediate.”
Meanwhile, scientists at Peking University also claim that the deadly virus was passed to humans from bats – but say it was through a mutation in snakes.
The researchers said that the new strain is made up of a combination of one that affects bats and another unknown coronavirus.
They believe that combined genetic material from both bats and this unknown strain picked up a protein that allows viruses to bind to certain host cells – including those of humans.
After analysing the genes of the strains the team found that snakes were susceptible to the most similar version of the coronavirus.
It meant that they likely provided a “reservoir” for the viral strain to grow stronger and replicate.
Snakes are sold at the Huanan Seafood Market in central Wuhan and the strain may have jumped to other animals before passing to humans, they claim.
But a senior researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, who asked not to be named, said the findings should be treated with caution.
He told the South China Morning Post: “It is based on calculation by a computer model.
“Whether it will match what happens in real life is inconclusive.
“The binding protein is important, but it is just one of the many things under investigation. There may be other proteins involved.”
The expert believes that the new strain was an RNA virus, meaning that its mutation speed was 100 times faster than that of a DNA virus such as smallpox.
Up to 200 Brits stranded in the region are expected to be evacuated and put into quarantine at a “secure facility” in the coming days.
Coronavirus, also known as 2019-nCoV, is deemed highly contagious and transmitted via a simple cough or sneeze.
The death toll in China has risen to 132 with the number of cases reaching nearly 6,000 – more than during the SARS epidemic of 2002-03.
