Wuhan virus.

[Workingman]

It is very early days and nobody knows how this will pan out. It could go the way of SARS or it might just as easily fade away, as a lot of outbreaks of varying sorts often do.

However, my daughter is working in Hanoi, Vietnam, so I am quite concerned and hope that it is brought / kept under control.

And it is now reported that six people in Scotland and N.I. are being monitored.

[JanB]

Rather worrying that people are still not being screened, properly, either leaving or entering another country, having come from China.

[saundra]

In a modern world with global travel I fail to see how it can be contained
And news papers are scare mongering I think especially the DM having a field day

[TheOstrich]

It does seem to be spreading quite rapidly now - 2 confirmed cases in France tonight, I read - so let us hope that it remains "not particularly severe" in its effects.

[cromwell]

In a modern world with global travel I fail to see how it can be contained
And news papers are scare mongering I think especially the DM having a field day

I think you are spot on Saundra.

[Workingman]

I do not understand why the media keeps prefixing coronavirus with the word "deadly".

The death rate from the figures they give us is about 0.028% or in numbers we can understand that's 3 in 1,000. And its spread of 51 new cases per day in a population upwards of 59 million (Hubei province) is less than 1 in 1 million; hardly of "wildfire" proportions.

So, either the numbers are correct and too much is being made of it or we are not getting the full facts and the reality is quite different. I would not put money against it being the later.

[cromwell]

Anything to sell a paper.
Some English papers have definitely been dumbed down. The Mail and Express web sites both capitalise words in the titles of articles, like:-
"Boris puts down SNP's Blackford with a BRUTAL putdown". It is unnecessary.

[AliasAggers]

Anything to sell a paper..

We rarely buy a daily paper now-a-days. There is too much rubbish in them.
One can find about what is happening by watching the T.V. News

[Workingman]

I see the UK has two confirmed cases, both York University students. They are now in isolation at a Newcastle hospital.

The 83 brought back from Wuhan on Friday are in quarantine for two weeks on the Wirral. I am not sure how that will work, but as they are not in isolation then if one shows signs ten days down the line I expect that the clock will have to be reset for all of them. It could be months before all of them are signed off as clean.

Hopefully they are all clear, as has been the case of all those tested so far, and remain that way.

[TheOstrich]

Given the fact they could well be infectious, I am unclear what the logic was behind landing the Wuhan evacuees at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and then shipping them all the way up to the Wirral by coach. Surely there must be closer airfields they could have used - what about the Airbus facility at Broughton, for example?