The coronavirus is now a 'serious and imminent threat' to the British public, the health secretary has declared this morning.
The announcement by Matt Hancock gives the Government greater powers to fight the spread of the virus, with four confirmed cases in the UK.
A Department of Health statement said: 'The Secretary of State has made regulations to ensure that the public are protected as far as possible from the transmission of the virus.
'The Secretary of State declares that the incidence or transmission of novel Coronavirus constitutes a serious and imminent threat to public health, and the measures outlined in these regulations are considered as an effective means of delaying or preventing further transmission of the virus.'
Mr Hancock has also designated Arrowe Park Hospital in the Wirral, and Kents Hill Park in Milton Keynes, where Britons evacuated from Wuhan have been transferred to, as 'isolation' facilities.
Wuhan and Hubei province, where the virus originated, have also been declared an 'infected area' by the health secretary.
The announcement comes as a British 'super spreader' is feared to have infected at least seven others with the coronavirus, prompting the emergency testing of hundreds of people on his flights, ski break and even his local pub.
The businessman is at the centre of a web of cases stretching across the UK, France and Spain after he apparently contracted the virus during a four-day trip to Singapore for a sales conference for gas analysis company Servomex.
The man in his fifties then jetted from south-east Asia to the Alps to ski in Les Contamines-Montjoie in late January where two more Britons became infected despite the 'super spreader' not having any cold or flu-like symptoms.
Britain's health authorities have also contacted 183 passengers and six crew on an Easyjet flight then taken by the unnamed man from Geneva to London, warning that they could be infected.
Five staff at The Grenadier in Hove, his local pub, have been instructed to self-isolate for a fortnight after he went there for a pint on Saturday February 1. And an East Sussex secondary schoolchild has also been told to stay at home for two week amid fears he came into contact with the so-called 'super spreader'.
Officials have desperately tried to stop further spread with a cross-border hunt for all the hundreds of people he may have had contact with.
Today nine Britons have been confirmed to have the killer virus - five in France, one in Japan, one in Spain and two in the UK.
More than 900 people have died and 37,000 have become infected since the outbreak began in the Chinese city of Wuhan, which has been placed in lockdown to curb the spread - an evacuation flight landed at RAF Brize Norton yesterday.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
