If the following report is true, then no wonder it's continuing to spread so quickly in China. The poor medical staff aren't being given a chance to recover, and are potentially passing it on to those they are treating.
One of the reasons that so many medics have caught the virus is down to a lack of protective equipment.
When seriously ill patient become unconscious there are certain procedures that need to be done to keep them alive. But these mean they are prone to throwing up or coughing lots when they were highly infectious. Medical staff have been doing this 'naked' with no surgical mask or any other equipment because there was none left.
There was a study of one hospital with 138 patients from early in the outbreak. 41% of people who caught it were in the hospital. 29% were staff, 12% were patients.
This was again down to lack of equipment and proper infection control measures combined with staff not understanding what they were dealing with initially.
This is why the NHS are taking the issue so seriously. They fear a mass outbreak in a hospital.
It looks like the Wuhan outbreak may have started at the food market but the next place it took off was the hospital, amongst patients, visitors, staff and family members.
Again this is a repeat of what happened with SARS.
One of the things they are particularly worried about with COVID-19 is a mutation which makes the virus a lot worse. It shares common features with SARS which had a very high death rate. The first wave of Spanish flu was mild but the later autumn one wasn't. The more it spreads the greater the chance of a mutation.
They want to slow things down as much as possible to find ways to treat the disease better, especially in the event it becomes worse.