Coronavirus: Cases double globally every five days as UK invests in search for new vaccine

Ukraine evacuations

Ukraine plans to evacuate its citizens from China by the end of this week, officials have said.

British man put in isolation after flying back from China

One of the Britons who returned from coronavirus-hit China on Sunday has said he now feels fine after a cough and sore throat led to him being put in isolation.

Anthony May-Smith is being cared for in Oxford after feeling unwell as he made his way back to England.

He travelled on the second evacuation flight carrying 11 British nationals from Wuhan to France, and then continued his journey to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.

Mr May-Smith said he had had "a bit of a cough and a sore throat" in China and was put in a quarantine area with about 30 others on the initial flight from Wuhan to France.

He told Sky News: "We went through a load of checks at the airport in Wuhan, I had a bit of a cough and a sore throat there.

"Then there was 30 of us on that flight to France that were put in a quarantine section on the flight.

"When we boarded the plane in France to come to the UK, the nurse asked if any of us had had any sort of symptoms in China.

"I made myself known to her and she told me to sit away from anybody else on the flight.

"There were people with babies on the flight and I obviously just didn't want to be anywhere near them, just in case.

"I feel fine now, I think it's probably the stress of getting back and being run down more than anything.

"I'm waiting for the test results to come back tomorrow."

Cases double every five days, says health secretary

The number of cases of the virus worldwide is doubling roughly every five days, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has told MPs.

Officially announcing £20m of investment by the UK to speed up development of a vaccine, he revealed that Public Health England scientists had sequenced the genome of the virus and were making it available to the scientific community.

They had discovered the virus had not changed over the past month, he said.

But the outbreak would be "with us for some months", he said, warning: "This is a marathon, not a sprint."

The UK was one of the first countries in the world to develop a new test for coronavirus, Mr Hancock said.

G7 health ministers agree to act jointly

Health ministers from the G7 countries have agreed to coordinate their response to the virus, Mr Hancock said.

Britain was taking a "belt and braces" approach, and was still working to contact everyone who had been in close contact with the two people in York who are suffering.

"We remain vigilant," he said, adding plans were in place to avoid the risk of it spreading and to cope with an outbreak.

He thanked staff involved, from the NHS to specialist military teams involved in transporting people returning.

NHS has 50 specialist coronavirus beds 

Britain has 50 specialist beds and 500 more potentially to isolate coronavirus victims, the health secretary said.

And the government was working on plans to provide more beds should they be needed, Mr Hancock said.

Everyone in quarantine had signed an agreement from the government to remain in isolation for 14 days, he told MPs.

People who suspect they have symptoms should not go to Accident & Emergency, he said, as they risked spreading the virus. Instead, they should call the NHS 111 number for advice.

Travellers returning from China must self-isolate - Hancock

The health secretary asked anyone in the UK who had recently arrived from Wuhan in China to "self-isolate".

“We will take a belt and braces approach that puts public protection as the absolute top priority,” Mr Hancock told the Commons.

Anyone returning should ring 111, stay indoors and avoid contact with anyone, he said.

The UK chief medical officer had raised the risk from low to moderate, after more than 17,000 cases had been in China, 185 other countries had been affected and 362 people had died so far.

As well as the £20m for developing a vaccine, the government was launching a publicity campaign to urge people to wash their hands regularly and if they cough, to do so into their sleeve.

"We need to win the battle not just against the disease but also of public confidence," he said.

Britain will not bring all UK nationals home from China

Mr Hancock said the government had no plans to evacuate all remaining UK nationals from China.

"There's an estimated 30,000 UK nationals in China, and the proportion of the population who have the virus outside of Wuhan is much lower than in Wuhan itself," he said.

MPs condemn racism towards Chinese

Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth condemned "racism and insensitivity" aimed at Chinese and East Asian people, adding: "None of these attempts to dehumanise an entire ethnicity should be allowed to prevail."

Mr Hancock said the whole House of Commons demonstrated a "rejection" to "any racism and insensitivity towards the Chinese community here or indeed visitors here of Chinese origin".

Russia may deport foreigners with coronavirus

Russia says it may deport foreigners who test positive for coronavirus.

Military planes from Moscow have flown in to pick up citizens from the Chinese province at the epicentre of the outbreak.

Russia, which has a 2,670-mile land border with China, reported its first two cases of the virus last week in the Siberian regions of Tyumen and Zabaykalsk. Both involved Chinese nationals.

The country has already halted passenger trains to China and after 136 passengers - all Chinese - were taken off the last train out at the border, the RIA news agency reported.

Russia's deputy prime minister Tatyana Golikova and the chief state sanitary physician Anna Popova during a briefing on handling the coronavirus 

Five more US cases include person-to-person spread

Another five confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in the US, bringing the total to 11.

The new cases include a second case of person-to-person transmission within the country.

"We expect to see more cases of person-to-person spread," said Dr Nancy Messonnier, director of the US Centers for Disease Control  and Prevention.

One case was in Massachusetts and four more were in California, she said. Four of the five had recently travelled to Wuhan.

One of the patients in California was a close household contact of a person who was infected in China.