February 27, 2020

expert reaction to 2 new UK cases of COVID-19

England’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Prof Chris Whitty, has announced 2 new cases of COVID-19 in the UK.

Prof Ian Jones, Virologist at the University of Reading, said:

“Sporadic further cases were and are to be expected given the international spread.  But the good news here is that, as for all other cases to date, the surveillance system has picked them up and moved them into isolation, providing the best support for the patients and the public at large. It reinforces the fact that the virus is not circulating in the UK at present and that current preventative measures are performing well.”    

Dr Bharat Pankhania, Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School, said:

“The two new cases are not unexpected – it follows the pattern of outbreaks of this nature. So far in the UK, we have been able to identify each case and contact trace successfully. Our containment policies are effective up to now, however we’ve also been lucky that no case has yet come to us form some remote corner of the world.”

Prof Christl Donnelly, University of Oxford and WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling, Imperial College London, said:

“It is not surprising that we have seen additional cases today.  The estimate from our work at Imperial College London (see report 4 here: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/news–wuhan-coronavirus/) is that about 1% of infections with the virus responsible for COVID-19 are fatal, so the total of 12 deaths to date in Italy suggests many more than the 470 cases detected so far. Our best estimate would be over 1000 cases. Each undetected case creates at least the potential for onward spread.  This combined with frequent travel to and from affected regions, means that all countries are at risk of detecting cases both in travelers and those they came into contact with.”

Prof Brendan Wren, Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), said:

“Given the regular transport links at this time of year between and the UK and northern Italy/Tenerife these new cases are not surprising. The patients have been isolated and the hope is that their contacts will be traced promptly to prevent further spread of the virus. There is no due cause for alarm and the current government guidelines and recommendations remain the same.”

Prof Tom Solomon, Director, NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections, University of Liverpool, said:

“It is not surprising that with the increased number of cases in Europe we have new seen two more cases in UK travellers. The reassuring thing is that they have been detected so quickly and are now in isolation to prevent further spread. It shows that the measures put in by Public Health England and NHS England are continuing to be effective in protecting the wider population. Let us hope for a speedy recovery of these new cases.”

Prof Keith Neal, Emeritus professor of Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, University of Nottingham, said:

“Two cases from locations known to have cases is not surprising particularly from Italy.  It changes very little except our current containment measures appear to be working.  Level of concern remains unchanged.” 

Prof Rowland Kao, Sir Timothy O’Shea Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology and Data Science, University of Edinburgh, said:

“We already have evidence of onward transmission occurring outside of China and so these two cases (associated with situations with high levels of infection) are not surprising. This occurrence should therefore already be well within the scope of the current approach to control. It does highlight that we should continue to expect more cases without direct association with China, and therefore (despite evidence of the epidemic tailing off in China) a need for continued vigilance with appropriate control measures for some time.”

Dr Tom Wingfield, Senior Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Physician, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, said:

“The new patients diagnosed today in the UK and now being managed in specialist infection units in Liverpool and London are not surprising and do not change the understanding of what the outbreak will look like in the UK. There are likely to be some more cases in the coming weeks but the UK public can be reassured that we have experienced teams in place to manage the isolation and care of people diagnosed with coronavirus and perform robust tracing and screening of their contacts. These teams, including those at Public Health England (PHE) and the infectious disease teams in Liverpool, London, Sheffield, Newcastle, and elsewhere in the UK are working hard behind the scenes to protect the UK public.

“PHE have announced that they will be launching a new public information campaign that should mean the public are better equipped to understand the coronavirus outbreak and measures to avoid coronavirus. We are all, public and professionals, part of this response to coronavirus and what we can do to continue looking after each other is keep calm, wash our hands with soap and water as regularly as possible, use and bin tissues for coughs and sneezes, and follow the changing guidance issued from PHE.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cmo-for-england-announces-2-new-cases-of-novel-coronavirus

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

The SMC also produced a Factsheet on COVID-19 which is available here:

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/smc-novel-coronavirus-factsheet/

Declared interests

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