Number of UK coronavirus cases hits 40
The Department for Health said today the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the UK had risen by four to 40.
The department said 13,525 people have been tested for the virus, with 40 positive results.
Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer of England, said the four new patients had recently travelled from Italy.
The figures for the number of UK cases were accurate as at 9am this morning.
Italy has been at the epicentre of the European coronavirus outbreak, with 1,694 confirmed cases, according to data from John Hopkins University.
The UK government agreed a plan for dealing with coronavirus during an emergency Cobra committee meeting this morning.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged people to “go about business as usual” and said the country was “very, very well-prepared”. But he added it was “likely” that the disease would spread.
“We’ve agreed a plan so that if and when it starts to spread, as I’m afraid it looks likely it will, we are in a position to take the steps that will be necessary,” he said this morning.
Earlier, the risk of coronavirus in the European Union was raised from moderate to high, the president of the European Commission said.
Ursula von der Leyen made the announcement as Brussels confirmed its first cases of the disease.
“The ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) has announced today that the risk level has risen from moderate to high for people in the European Union. In other words, the virus continues to spread,” she told a news conference in Brussels.
Health commissioner Stella Kyriakides said 2,100 cases of coronavirus were confirmed in 18 of the 27 EU states, and 38 EU citizens had died because of the disease.
Separately, Paul Cosford, Public Health England’s emeritus medical director, told Sky News: “With the increasing numbers that we are seeing in a range of different countries and beginning to see here, it is more likely now that we will see more widespread transmission.
“We have to be prepared for that, and a range of different eventualities, and it’s right to say that some of those might be quite challenging for us. But we will have the best preparations that we can possibly have in place for them.”