Fears the coronavirus is spreading inside the NHS are growing after three new cases were confirmed to have been found in or closely linked to hospitals yesterday.
At least four NHS staff have caught the illness, which has now infected 90 people in the UK, along with two other people in hospitals and a medical student in London.
Three new cases were confirmed this morning by the Scottish Government, in people from Forth Valley, Greater Glasgow & Clyde, and Grampian, bringing the country’s total to six.
Healthcare workers are at particular risk of contracting and spreading the virus because they come into close contact with sick perople and meet a lot of different patients, visitors and colleagues.
King’s College Hospital, in London, yesterday put parts of its buildings in lockdown after two coronavirus cases were discovered there, and another was diagnosed at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester.
One of the first people in the UK to be diagnosed with the virus was a GP working in Brighton, and another hospital doctor in nearby Worthing contracted the illness.
NHS workers in Carlisle and Maidstone and a patient and a student at King’s College Hospital have also all been diagnosed.
England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, today said it is ‘highly likely’ that the virus is now spreading inside the UK among people who haven’t travelled.
He added that more cases will appear in the UK and it is unlikely that authorities will be able to prevent an outbreak at some point.
But Professor Whitty said he did not expect cases to be worse among healthcare workers because they would be told by bosses not to work through illness and to go home at the first sight of an infection.
A woman who works at the Cumberland Infirmary, in Carlisle, is one of at least four NHS workers to have caught the coronavirus already. She caught the illness in Italy and travelled home through Germany
UK chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, today told Parliament’s Health & Social Care Committee that it’s ‘highly likely’ that the coronavirus is now spreading inside the UK
A patient at King’s College Hospital, London, has been diagnosed with the coronavirus, along with a virology student who was studying there
A queue of people was pictured outside Boots in Wimbledon this morning reportedly waiting to buy hand sanitiser
A patient was diagnosed with the virus at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester. The Manchester Evening News reports that the city had five cases confirmed yesterday
A batch of three new coronavirus infections in Scotland today doubled the country’s tally to six.
The Scottish Government announced that the people who had been diagnosed were ‘clinically well’ and receiving ‘appropriate care’. They are all known contacts of existing cases and are believed to have caught the virus inside the UK.
Scotland’s chief medical officer, Dr Catherine Calderwood, reassured the public that Scotland is well prepared for an outbreak and said: ‘Clinicians are now conducting contact tracing, the process of gathering details of the places those who have tested positive visited and the people they have been in contact with.
‘Close contact involves either face-to-face contact or spending more than 15 minutes within two metres of an infected person.
‘The risk is very low in situations where someone may have passed a patient on the street or in a shop.
‘Health protection teams will contact those who are at risk from the current cases – those who are not contacted are not at risk.’
Exact whereabouts of many UK patients are unknown but 80 are known to be in England, six in Scotland, three in Northern Ireland and one in Wales.
The Department of Health in England yesterday changed tack and announced it would no longer give running updates about where each patient is nor where they caught the infection.
Officials were accused of ‘secrecy’ and one critic said the public should be given as much information as possible so they could protect themselves – authorities in Singapore reveal the exact street where each case is diagnosed.
As the number of coronavirus cases is surging in the UK – it has risen from 13 to 90 in the past week – there are increasing concerns about the NHS’s ability to cope if an epidemic breaks out.
Calls to the NHS 111 helpline are up 40 per cent on the same time last year.
More than 442,000 calls were placed to the 24/7 helpline between February 24 and March 1 – an average of 63,000 each day.
In comparison, the figure for the same week last year was just 320,000 – or 45,000 calls per day.
The NHS today said call handlers are working ’round the clock’ to respond to the coronavirus outbreak.
Disgruntled patients have complained they have waited four hours for a call back or in the case of one IT worker, four days.
The NHS has already announced it would plough an extra £1.7million into the service to recruit an additional 500 staff, and set up a new coronavirus advice website.
One of the confirmed cases is a female NHS worker in her thirties in Cumbria who caught the virus while on a family holiday in Italy.
Three other workers in the health service are known to be among the 90.
A GP in Brighton and a hospital doctor in nearby Worthing were among the first cases to be diagnosed in the UK in early February, after they went on holiday together with a man who caught it in Singapore.
And an NHS employee working out of offices in Maidstone, Kent, was also confirmed to have caught the disease.
Professor Whitty said NHS staff would be urged to be extra careful about their own health and stay home from work if they felt ill.
He said he believed infections among NHS workers would be ‘similar to other areas’ because staff would be told to curb their usual habits of working through illness.
‘NHS staff are remarkably determined to come and serve their professions,’ he told ministers today.
‘They may come in with quite significant feelings of unwellness… We would definitely not wish them to do that in this situation.’
Eight of the new coronavirus cases – three in England, four in Scotland and one in Northern Ireland – caught the deadly infection in the UK, sparking fears the virus is rapidly spreading across the home nations.
The ripple effects of the spreading virus started to be felt among businesses in London and across the UK as companies sent employees home and locked down their offices.
Sony and Nike yesterday closed offices in London and Sunderland ‘out of an abundance of caution’ as they order deep cleans of their buildings after employees were potentially exposed to the virus.
US accountancy firm Deloitte confirmed an employee from its London office was diagnosed with the coronavirus after travelling to Asia, and Goldsmith’s University confirmed a visitor to its student halls had fallen ill, sending tremors through the student community.
An Apple store in Belfast was seen being deep-cleaned by staff in hazmat suits yesterday – at least one case has been diagnosed in the Northern Irish city – and an office building in London’s Mayfair was closed.
The office of Method Investments and Advisory Ltd was deserted after the building management allegedly told staff that somebody based there had been infected.
Government officials have been criticised for changing their policy on releasing the locations of coronavirus patients in England.
It had been doing so with every update until yesterday, and the Department of Health said it will now only provide weekly updates on Fridays.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is seen leaving the back of Downing Street this morning. Since he launched his coronavirus battle plan on Tuesday the number of confirmed infections in the UK has more than doubled from 40 to 90
Cases of coronavirus have been diagnosed in all corners of the UK, in at least 10 counties in England as well as in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. All NHS hospitals now have dedicated coronavirus isolation pods where suspected cases can speak to a specialist on the phone away from public areas
Professor Chris Whitty told the government’s Health and Social Care Committee this morning that, in future, it intends to provide rolling data and even a map.
A former regional director for Public Health England, Professor Paul Ashford, told The Guardian the government needed to be more up-front with its data.
He said: ‘They should be sharing the data as much as possible, to make the public equal partners in tackling this and help them make decisions about their own lives.
‘The public needs to know if it’s in their area on a daily basis.’
In his meeting with the health committee today, Professor Whitty said he expects the number of people infected in the UK to increase and that it was unlikely that officials would be able to prevent an outbreak.
He warned ‘community transmission’ was happening in the UK, and the government’s focus had moved from the ‘contain’ phase to focus on efforts to ‘delay’ the spread.
Professor Whitty said: ‘I’m expecting the number only to go up.
‘There are now several – not large numbers – but several cases where we cannot see where this has come from in terms of a clear transmission.
‘Either because someone has come directly from overseas or because they’ve had a close contact with someone who has recently returned from overseas.
‘That I think makes it highly likely therefore that there is some level of community transmission of this virus in the UK now.’
A person wearing a hazmat suit and gas mask was pictured at Nike’s headquarters in Sunderland, yesterday, where offices were closed for deep cleaning after the company said employees may have come into contact with people with the coronavirus
Staff in hazmat suits were seen carrying out a deep clean at the Apple store in Belfast. There has been at least one case confirmed in the Northern Irish city
A member of staff at accountancy firm Deloitte tested positive for the coronavirus after returning from Asia (pictured, Deloitte’s London office on New Street Square, Holborn). The office building is undergoing deep cleaning and the patient is now in hospital
The government’s battle plan has been divided into four stages – ‘Contain’, ‘delay’, ‘research’ and ‘mitigate’
Government officials have warned that up to 20 per cent of the UK’s workforce could be off sick if a full-blown epidemic breaks out on home soil.
But, in a massive boost for workers, it was yesterday announced that people will get statutory sick pay on the first day of their illness instead of the fourth, amid fears employees may not get paid if they take time off because of coronavirus.
In central London today, above Louis Vuitton’s headquarters, a video producer, who works in the building part-time, tweeted: ‘Looks like New Bond street offices have Covid 19 today. My building manager BNPPRE_UK send email about multiple confirmed cases. Everyone advised to leave and work from home. Coronavirus.’
A Method Investments employee later corroborated the reports that BNP Paribas Real Estate, the building management, had advised staff to leave the office after ‘a case of coronavirus was confirmed.’
BNP Paribas Real Estate has not yet confirmed the reports.
The firm’s public relations chief, Kate Oliver, said: ‘BNP Paribas Real Estate manages the common areas of this building and for all our managed spaces we are following the official advice of PHE regarding anything related to COVID-19.
‘Separately the occupiers will follow their own policies and procedures for their occupied space.’
England’s chief medical officer this morning warned the coronavirus will kill Britons and added an epidemic was ‘highly likely’ as the outbreak in Britain continues to accelerate. Cases have jumped 70 per cent overnight.
Professor Chris Whitty’s chilling message for Britain’s 66million residents came after Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted yesterday people’s lives may have to be put on hold for up to three months to fight the deadly virus.
A commuter wears a face mask as he crosses London Bridge in the capital this morning
Photos taken today show brave nurses donning face masks and protective glasses while swabbing patients in their nose and mouth through an open car window in London
A similar scheme will soon be rolled out in Northern Ireland, where nurses were seen practicing the procedure at Antrim Area Hospital in Co Antrim this morning
Under the government’s ‘battle plan’, schools could be shut, millions forced to work from home and people asked to stop eating out, going to the pub or shopping in a bid to keep them away from others.
Official disaster projections suggest as many as half a million people could die if the disease isn’t controlled, but evidence from China – where fewer than 3,000 have died – suggests the real figure would be a fraction of this.
Coronavirus fears have now gripped Britain with nearly 3,000 people getting tested for coronavirus yesterday – the highest daily toll since the first two cases were diagnosed in York on January 31.
Commuters have now resorted to wearing storage boxes and plastic bags over their heads to avoid catching the disease, while supermarket shelves have been emptied as Brits stockpile hand gels, loo roll and cleaning sprays.
The other 30 cases confirmed today – 29 in England and one in Scotland – were infected abroad, with most thought to have been struck down in Italy, the centre of Europe’s escalating coronavirus crisis.
Officials in Northern Ireland revealed two new cases this afternoon, saying one patient caught the virus in northern Italy while the other was infected by a carrier in the UK.
Scotland’s government confirmed one of its two new patients had also travelled to Italy, while the other had come into contact with a known positive case in the UK.
Leading scientists today admitted the cases spreading within the UK was of ‘concern’ and said it was ‘right to be concerned’, adding: ‘We can probably expect to see an increase in the number of cases in the forthcoming days and weeks.
Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London, today admitted the world ‘tried very hard to stop this virus altogether’ but had failed. He told the BBC Today programme: ‘You can see from the statistics, the number of countries affected that that battle is really over.’
More than 80 nations across the world have now confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The Faroe Islands and Poland today became the latest countries to be struck – only a handful of European nations have not recorded cases.
Professor Ferguson said: ‘We’re now moving towards trying to slow the spread to allow the health systems to cope and try to mitigate the impact of the epidemic.’
He added the UK was in the ‘early stage’ of an epidemic and said time is running out to contain the crisis by reducing the spread with drastic measures.
Professor Ferguson did not specify what sort of measures would be needed – but Italy, which is battling its own crisis, has urged residents to avoid kissing and is considering closing all schools for a fortnight.
Potential coronavirus patients are tested at a drive-thru centre in London today as part of a city-wide bid to stop the infection from spreading at hospitals
A test centre has opened at Parsons Green, west London, where people who believe they have contracted Covid-19 can be checked while still sat in their own cars
Infectious disease experts today said the new cases suggest there could be ‘local transmission within the UK’ – the World Health Organization already admits the virus is being spread between humans on British soil.
Dr Stephen Griffin, of the University of Leeds, said: ‘It is right to be concerned and prepared, but it is not a time to panic. The number of cases remains small compared to the UK population and the current strategy of containment is working by and large.
‘Nevertheless, we can probably expect to see an increase in the number of cases in the forthcoming days and weeks; the question is whether cases of unknown origin may start to become more significant.’
In an interview with Sky News this morning, Professor Whitty said: ‘I think it is… almost certain there will be more cases in the UK, probably a lot more cases as the Prime Minister laid out,and we would expect some deaths, yes.’
Professor Whitty told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that people wearing masks in public – including on the London Underground – will have little effect on whether or not they catch coronavirus.
The individual viruses which cause the disease are so small that they pass through many masks and people may be more likely to get it by touching a contaminated surface and then their face.
And he told presenters Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid: ‘It’s much more likely than not that we’re going to deal with a significant epidemic.
‘If people have got an infection and are being moved around a hospital then wearing masks is a good thing to do but for people just walking the streets it’s not going to have a significant effect.’
Piers Morgan pointed out that those who are wearing the ineffective items might also leave fewer masks available for the NHS.
It comes after it was revealed today that a hospital worker in Cumbria is one of two people in the county to have tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
The woman, who is in her thirties, is understood to have worked at Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary. The trust said she self-isolated immediately after returning home from a trip to Italy with flu-like symptoms.
Colin Cox, director of public health at Cumbria County Council, said another Carlisle resident had also caught the virus. The News & Star newspaper says this is her partner.
It comes after a woman who works at Carlisle’s Cumberland Infirmary (pictured) tested positive for the coronavirus. The woman, thought to be in her 30s and live in Carlisle, caught the virus on holiday in Germany
Mr Cox said the council was working with Public Health England (PHE) to get in touch with anyone who had been in contact with the two people affected. Neither have been named.
Three other coronavirus patients are known to be NHS workers – an A&E doctor in Worthing, a locum GP in Brighton and an NHS office worker in Kent who was diagnosed yesterday.
Fears were today raised that two primary school pupils at a primary school in Winchester, Hampshire, may have caught the coronavirus while in a taxi.
Both students have been asked to self-isolate for 14 days because they travelled in a car that an infected patient had been in. Health officials say their risk is ‘very low’.
Elsewhere, a primary school in South Ockendon, Essex has closed for a deep clean after a family of a pupil travelled to one of the quarantined areas of Italy.
Last night it was revealed the family at the heart of the UK’s outbreak are a husband and wife whose son attends a £5,000-a-term school in Surrey.
The couple were confirmed as having the infection. Other parents who came into contact with the pair have been placed in self isolation.
Their son, who attends St Edmund’s in Hindhead, Surrey, has also been placed in self isolation – but has not yet tested positive for the fast spreading virus.
Elsewhere in the UK, potential coronavirus patients are being tested at drive-thru centres in London as part of a city-wide bid to stop the infection from spreading at hospitals.
A test centre has opened at Parsons Green, west London, where people who believe they have contracted COVID-19 can be checked while still sat in their own cars.
Photos taken today show brave nurses donning face masks and protective glasses while swabbing patients in their nose and mouth through an open car window.
The Central London Community Healthcare NHS trust launched the scheme this week. If successful, it will be rolled out more widely across England.
A similar scheme will soon be rolled out in Northern Ireland, where nurses were seen practicing the procedure at Antrim Area Hospital in Co Antrim this morning.
Only patients referred by NHS 111 are currently being sent to the drive thru service, with potential patients thought to be seriously ill excluded.
It comes as stock markets in Europe opened tentatively at the start of trading today as investors continued to consider the US Federal Reserve cutting interest rates.
Govan, Glasgow: The fruit and veg section and the bakery section of this Scottish Asda store was bare last night
Left, Osterley, west London: There is barely a bottle of handsoap in this branch of Tesco. Right, Pimlico, London: There was not a single bag of pasta available in this Sainsbury’s store last night
London’s benchmark FTSE 100 index of major blue-chip companies rose 94 points or 1.4 per cent this morning to 6,813 points compared with the close yesterday.
It was the third straight day of rises for the index, after coronavirus panic wiped more than £251billion off the value of Britain’s biggest companies last week.
In the eurozone, Frankfurt’s DAX 30 index retreated 0.2 per cent to 11,963 points, while the Paris CAC 40 also lost 0.2 per cent to 5,381.
Interest rates in Britain could be cut in response to the coronavirus outbreak, with Bank of England governor Mark Carney indicating it might be on the cards.
MailOnline readers have shared their pictures of empty shelves across the country as shoppers continued to ignore Government advice not to panic buy.
Stockpiling of household goods means that many aisles in Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Asda, Lidl and Aldi up and down the UK are looking increasingly desolate.
Sections for hand soap and disinfectant, nappies and baby wipes as well as dried goods such as pasta and rice appear to be the most decimated.
Britain’s supermarkets have also been accused of setting up ‘doomsday’ displays in stores and online aimed at worried stockpiling ‘survivalist’ shoppers.
All the best selling suggested items on Amazon’s Fresh website in grocery and beauty all appear to similar items being bought in bulk across the UK.
It comes as ministers launched a public information campaign urging the public to wash their hands whenever they arrive somewhere amid frantic efforts to halt the rise of coronavirus in the UK.
The drive is designed to change people’s attitude to hygiene, amid fears coronavirus could become a seasonal problem.
Yesterday Boris Johnson unveiled the government’s ‘battle plan’ for dealing with a major outbreak in this country, which experts believe is increasingly likely.
Under the plans, troops could be deployed on the streets, infected patients not suffering from complications may be sent home from hospital, and non-urgent NHS operations could be cancelled to free up space in hospitals.
The PM also revealed schools could be shut and children allowed to do coursework and sit exams from their home to stop the spread.
But he maintained that this would only be worst-case scenario and said schools should not close unless instructed to by Public Health England.
It comes after the news that a breath test that instantly spots patients with coronavirus has been developed by British scientists.
They say the technology could be used to rapidly screen people in airports. And it could also be used in GP surgeries, pharmacies or ambulances, giving an instant result.
The technology, developed by a team at Northumbria University in Newcastle, needs further testing but experts believe it could be quickly change the way the virus is spotted around the world.
The Government is launching a renewed public information campaign urging people to wash their hands to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Adverts will seek to drive home the message that regular hand-washing is the single most important action individuals can take in the fight against Covid-19.
TODAY: The FTSE 100 index rose 94 points or 1.4 per cent this morning to 6,813 points
THIS WEEK: The FTSE 100 has been rising this week – and is up today for the third day in a row
A huge public information campaign is urging the public to wash their hands whenever they arrive somewhere
Professor Whitty’s comments come after the NHS yesterday announced it had hiked its threat level to the highest possible ‘national incident’ after 12 more British patients tested positive for the infection.
Health chiefs have declared the epidemic a ‘level four incident’, which grants them emergency powers to take control of local hospitals.
Coronavirus was ratcheted up to level four status in January, but the move was only confirmed yesterday as the government tried to calm public concern by unveiling a four-pronged strategy to tackle the growing crisis.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson held a press conference yesterday with Professor Whitty and the government’s chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance, to launch the official action plan.
Troops could be deployed on the streets, infected patients who are not suffering from complications could be sent home from hospital, and non-urgent NHS operations could be cancelled to free up space in overwhelmed hospitals.
The PM also revealed schools could be shut and children allowed to do coursework and sit exams from their home to stop the spread. But he maintained that this would only be worst-case scenario and said schools should not close unless instructed to by Public Health England.
Mr Johnson said the government would take all ‘necessary and reasonable steps’ to contain the coronavirus, but appealed for the public to keep ‘going about our business as usual’.
He said: ‘I do think that this is a national challenge. The potential is there for this to be something that our country has to get through.
‘But I have absolutely no doubt that we have the resources, we have the health service to get through it.’
The 28-page ‘action plan’ was agreed at the first emergency Cobra meeting to be chaired by the PM on Monday.
The report stresses the response is still in the ‘containment’ phase, and explained there are four stages – contain, delay, research and mitigate.
But experts fear they will have to shift to ‘delay’ tactics – effectively damage limitation – within days or weeks amid growing outbreaks across Europe.
More than 2,500 people have now been diagnosed in Italy, which is in the grip of the second worst outbreak outside of China, and hundreds of patients have been discovered in Germany and France.
Poland today declared its first case of the coronavirus, following Ukraine yesterday.
The only European countries without infections are now Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Modlova, Turkey and Cyprus.
A drive-through coronavirus testing facility has been set up in Parsons Green, west London, where people can go for a swab test after being referred by NHS 111
Dr Joanne Medhurst, an NHS medical director said: ‘We’ve set up the ‘drive through’ service to make sure people in our community can get safe, convenient and quick checks for coronavirus, as part of NHS efforts to keep everyone safe’
NHS sites across the UK are on high alert for the spread of coronavirus as the outbreak escalates. Pictured: Isolation pods at the Good Hope Hospital in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
One woman wore a plastic storage container over her head as she rode a bus, believed to be in London (left). Somewhere else in the UK a man tried to cover his head with a Tesco bag (right)
Cleaners in protective suits were seen disinfecting an Apple Store in Belfast in an apparent ‘deep clean’. There has been one case of coronavirus diagnosed in Belfast, in a woman who caught it in Italy
The Government’s action plan states that the ‘vast majority’ of cases will have only mild-to-moderate effects on individuals, but points out that the virus is highly infectious.
‘As it is a new virus, the lack of immunity in the population (and the absence as yet of an effective vaccine) means that Covid 19 has the potential to spread extensively,’ the document says.
‘The current data seems to show that we are all susceptible to catching this disease, and thus it seems more likely than not that the UK will be significantly affected.’
‘The potential is there for this to be something that our country has to get through. But I have absolutely no doubt that we have the resources, we have the health service to get through it.’
The plan said that in the event of mass infections the Government ‘will aim to minimise the social and economic impact, subject to keeping people safe’.
There would be ‘population distancing strategies’ such as school closures, encouraging greater home working, and reducing the number of large scale gatherings to slow the spread of the disease.
Pensioners would be advised to stay away from events such as VE Day commemorations to avoid putting themselves at risk. However, experts say that an infected person is as likely to pass on the virus to 12 people in a pub as in a 70,000 seater stadium.
Police ‘would concentrate on responding to serious crimes and maintaining public order’ if forces suffer ‘a significant loss of officers and staff.’
Meanwhile, the armed forces could be called upon to ‘backfill’ gaps in emergency services and provide other assistance if required.
‘The Ministry of Defence has put in place plans to ensure the delivery of its operations in the UK and overseas. There are also well-practiced arrangements for Defence to support to civil authorities if requested,’ the document says.
The police could be asked to enforce road and building closures, and the Army could be drafted in to enforce lockdowns where necessary.
An empty passageway in Venice which would often be heaving with tourist, but is now deserted because of the virus outbreak
Some gondoliers who usually face high demand from the visitors’ 30million annual visitors have been left with little to do
A handful of tourists walk in St Mark’s Square in Venice last week, some of them wearing face masks, with the historic city largely deserted because of the coronavirus outbreak
The report also highlighted the threat to the NHS, which could come under extreme pressure from a wave of a cases.
Under mitigation plans, non-coronavirus patients could be discharged early from hospital to recuperate at home, and routine operations postponed. Recently retired doctors, nurses and other staff could be brought back to help increase capacity.
A ‘worst case scenario’ would see 80 per cent of the UK population contract the virus, with up to a fifth of employees unable to work in ‘peak weeks’ – predicted to be in three months’ time.
Scientists are still hoping that, if rapid spread can be staved off until the summer, warmer weather will help, but are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the prospects of avoiding a major outbreak in the UK.
It comes as online travel agent Travel Republic today closed its office in London after one of its employees tested positive for coronavirus.
The company said its premises on London Road in Norbiton, south London, would be shut to staff while they undergo a deep clean.
It added that the patient was receiving medical attention and all staff have been told to ring NHS 111 if they are concerned or feel unwell.
A spokeswoman for the company said: ‘We can confirm that a member of staff based at our London Road offices in Norbiton received a positive test for the Covid-19 virus yesterday.
‘They are now receiving medical attention. As a precaution, we have closed our offices today while a deep clean is undertaken and we receive further advice from the relevant authorities.
‘All staff have been notified and encouraged to contact the NHS 111 if they are concerned or feel unwell.
‘Our primary concern at this time is the health of our staff, and we’re working with the authorities to ensure best practice guidelines are being followed.’
Meanwhile, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama cancelled all of its scheduled events until 11 March due to a teacher having the virus.
The unidentified man had come into contact with a ‘limited number’ of students last week, the school admitted in an email to staff and students.
Guildhall School of Music and Drama didn’t release any more information about the male teacher – but he is thought to teach music.
He was whisked off for treatment at London’s Royal Free Hospital, a specialist NHS centre for infectious diseases.
In an email sent to staff and students, the school – ranked as one of the world’s best performing arts institutes – said he is ‘recovering well’.
According to The Guardian, the note added: ‘He was present and teaching in one of the ancillary school buildings on one day last week.
‘He came into contact with a limited number of students and we are working closely with those students to ensure that they receive urgent appropriate advice.’