Response to first 2 UK cases of coronavirus not robust enough

[MissPoldark]

The hotel is still open and accepting visitors. Apparently they weren’t immediately informed that 2 of their guests had been diagnosed.
All public areas should have been deep cleaned but there is no suggestion this has been done.

No details are being released about where the tourists had visited (because of “patient confidentiality” - bureaucracy is dangerous) How on earth can anyone in York know whether they’ve been put at risk?
How can they trace possible contacts without making this information public?

Well, so long as the quarantined guests arent sneezing all over the other guests I'm sure they'll be fine. I assume that clever people who know a lot more about how the virus is transmitted than you or I will have come up with the quarantine arrangements.
All that said, I think I'd like to know if the hotel I'd shelled out good money for was housing quarantine patients...

Oops, that answer makes no sense. Sorry, I'm half watching the news and half reading MN - that will teach me to multi-task

What quarantined guests? The guests affected are in hospital. I have seen no reports of other guests being quarantined.

From the Lancet:

Given that 2019-nCoV is no longer contained within Wuhan, other major Chinese cities are probably sustaining localised outbreaks. Large cities overseas with close transport links to China could also become outbreak epicentres, unless substantial public health interventions at both the population and personal levels are implemented immediately. Independent self-sustaining outbreaks in major cities globally could become inevitable because of substantial exportation of presymptomatic cases and in the absence of large-scale public health interventions.

At 57% YABU and 57% YANBU, I'd say coronavirus has broken Mumsnet too!

YABVU. Do you really think the government wants to risk this spreading? They are 100% doing everything they need to. Threads like this are massively unhelpful and just get people worried for no reason.

The reason I take this view is from looking at how easily this has spread in other areas.
Look at the first case in Germany. Colleague from Shanghai visited who was asymptomatic but still passed on the virus and now they have 6 or 7 cases.
That’s from a situation where all the contacts were known and traceable.

Would you expect the hotel to shut down after a guest had flu?

And yet 400,000 people die every year from flu. So far, 170 from coronavirus. The mortality rate from flu is around 1%, from coronavirus maybe 2% (though that is probably an overestimate because there will be people who had it so mildly they never even saw a doctor).

YABVU. There is no need to panic. If you are elderly, very young, or immuno-compromised, then you should take the same cautions as normal during a flu outbreak. Otherwise life as normal.

Do you really think the government wants to risk this spreading?
They hadn’t even originally planned to quarantine the repatriated Brits!

I have come down with a cold and flu type symptoms after mixing with newly arrived chinese students this week at work. I am saying it's just a cold but it could be something more who knows! I will still go about my business as I am pretty sure it's a cold but once this virus is as widespread as it is now, who will know if it's a cold/flu or Coronavirus?

Also, if I had been unlucky enough to contract the virus I would hope the government would do as much as possible to keep my identity confidential as the press coverage would be brutal.

People are already doing awful things like making their children worried about Chinese children in school and moving away from Chinese people on public transport.

We also need to keep in mind that only 2% of the 100% that have contracted it have died. That's 98% survival rate which is pretty high. The 2% are also likely to not have got medical intervention in time.

Normal flu death rates range from 0.1% to 20% depending on the pandemic level, for perspective.

Because they probably didn't need to. They would have done all the risk assessments needed. They will have now quarantined them to due to public outcry rather than need probably.

Not sure what makes you think you know better than the experts TBH.

@Trafalger
You should really stay at home to be on the safe side. Hopefully it is just a cold.

How do you know the person that serves you in the shop today, or serves you dinner at a restaurant, doesn't have the flu?

Because the flu is more deadly. So you should be more worried about that.

@MissPoldark I don't think that would go down with work very well! I also a garn factory toddler who has come out with a cold today as well so fairly certain it is just a cold. But my point was who can say for certain? Once it is in the population it is impossible to control.

I have come down with a cold and flu type symptoms after mixing with newly arrived chinese students this week at work. I am saying it's just a cold but it could be something more who knows! I will still go about my business as I am pretty sure it's a cold but once this virus is as widespread as it is now, who will know if it's a cold/flu or Coronavirus?

If you've come down with symptoms after mixing with people newly arrived from China you should have taken medical advice. It's not for you to decide to 'carry on as normal'.

Earlier, on BBC, they said that the virus was spread by direct transmission, ie blood, saliva, mucus etc spread by touch, ingestion or inhalation (apologies to anyone eating!).

On that basis, I'd be happy to exercise a bit more care than usual with hygiene, especially hand hygiene, and think that that will be enough to prevent me ingesting anything that might infect me. As far as inhalation goes, unless you're planning on snorting stuff off an unwashed floor I think staying in a hotel room that has had a proper clean and clean linen should be adequate, provided you take care to wash your hands, or use anti-bac gel, regularly.

• Have a germ not a garn (damn autocorrect)

I have come down with a cold and flu type symptoms after mixing with newly arrived chinese students this week at work

Yeah, you really should seek medical advice on that one. Someone I know has had flu this last week but as they had been in contact with people who had recently returned from China they had to be screened.

The rate of spread makes it look fairly innocuous.

The hysteria is real.

The government reaction predictable.

If people are ill after mixing with newly arrived Chinese people and then carry on as normal, how easily will the virus be spread? I think the pp needs to get medical advice on that one.

Why are people freaking out about it so much? Flu kills people all the time anyway.

Newly arrived Chinese students should really be subject to a 2 week quarantine in their accommodation. Along with anyone else recently returned from China.
This is just what I mean about the response being inadequate!

Not sure what makes you think you know better than the experts TBH.

“Experts” have also criticised the response:

“Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia, slammed the government after the hotel stayed open following the outbreak, insisting the Department of Health (DoH) had a ‘duty’ to warn the public of any risks.

“The [DoH] at least needs to tell people how big the potential spread of this virus is, and how much contact with the wider community these two have had.

“Why didn’t the Department of Health say something sooner?””

China is a country of over 1 billion people and only 11,000 people have caught the virus. The virus is largely hitting a select number of cities so it is ridiculous to think that any Chinese students are a risk - China covers an area the size of Europe. If there was an outbreak of flu in Romania would you think it reasonable for all Europeans to be quarantined or treated as infectious?

The current precautions of quarantining people in cities such as Wuhan makes sense but most people returning from China won’t have been anywhere near the highly infected areas and don’t cause a high risk. It’s also cold and flu season so if everybody who mixes with a Chinese person and then gets a cold seeks medical advise or takes 2 weeks off work the nhs and economy would be on its knees!

As others have said regular flu is a massive killer and we don’t see mass hysteria about that. The coronavirus is new which makes it newsworthy but it doesn’t mean it is something we should all be panicking about and the risk to people in the UK remains very low.