The UK government has warned that the coronavirus outbreak will “get worse before it gets better”, as a British businessman linked to 11 additional cases of the disease spoke out for the first time about his experience.
Addressing MPs in the House of Commons, health secretary Matt Hancock said the risk to the public “remains moderate” and “dealing with this disease is a marathon, not a sprint”.
New capital funding had been allocated to create “further isolation areas and other necessary facilities” to deal with the outbreak, he disclosed, defending his decision to forcibly quarantine people who posed a health risk to others, after assuming new legal powers.
Mr Hancock said the “proportionate” measures would “help us slow down the transmission of the virus and make it easier for National Health Service and public health staff to do their jobs”.
But he cautioned that the spread of the virus “will get worse before it gets better”.
Earlier Steve Walsh, dubbed a “super-spreader” after 11 people with whom he was connected also fell ill, declared himself “fully recovered” as he remained in quarantine at a central London hospital.
Mr Walsh, a 53-year-old father of two from Hove in East Sussex, issued a statement in which he said that, as soon as he knew he had been exposed to a confirmed case of coronavirus — at a conference in Singapore last month — he contacted his doctor, the NHS telephone advice service and Public Health England.
Mr Walsh, who works for the gas analysis group Servomex, said: “I was advised to attend an isolated room at hospital, despite showing no symptoms, and subsequently self-isolated at home as instructed.
“When the diagnosis was confirmed I was sent to an isolation unit in hospital, where I remain, and, as a precaution, my family was also asked to isolate themselves.”
Mr Walsh, whose identity had not previously been known, appears to have been involved in transmitting the disease to an unusually high number of other people despite apparently displaying no symptoms himself.
On his way back to the UK he spent several days at a ski chalet in France, where five Britons were later diagnosed with the virus.
He is also linked to at least five further cases of the illness in the UK, including two doctors, one of whom worked at a Brighton surgery that has had to shut temporarily.
Mr Walsh is also linked to one man taken ill in Majorca, Spain. He remains at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, from where he issued his statement.
Earlier, Paul Cosford, emeritus medical director of Public Health England, had said the four new cases of coronavirus announced in the UK on Monday were all contacts of Mr Walsh so the news had not come as “a complete surprise”.
“Contact tracing” run by PHE was “working very well”, he told the BBC’s Today programme.
The agency was also working to find people who had come into contact with the two doctors who had the disease. Prof Cosford insisted, however, that there was “not a general risk to any patient of the NHS in that area”.
The Patcham Nursing Home in Brighton said on Tuesday that it had “closed to all visitors” after one of the GPs who had fallen ill visited a patient there about a week ago.
The care home said: “It is important to state that no one at the home is unwell. However, following the closure of the local GP surgery, as a precaution we have closed the home to all visitors.”
Additional reporting by agencies
