A PATIENT locked down on quarantine at a UK hospital is hoarding free booze to dish out to other Wuhan evacuees. The group of 83 Brits have been kept at a Merseyside hospital for 14 days and were joined by 11 more people who were flown out of the coronavirus-hit city last week. They landed […]
A PATIENT locked down on quarantine at a UK hospital is hoarding free booze to dish out to other Wuhan evacuees.
The group of 83 Brits have been kept at a Merseyside hospital for 14 days and were joined by 11 more people who were flown out of the coronavirus-hit city last week.
They landed at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and were bussed to Arrowe Park Hospital in the Wirral.
Pictures came to light on Monday of KFC and shopping being delivered to patients at the hospital while they are kept on lockdown to ensure they do not have the deadly virus.
Now, it has emerged one of the patients has been receiving free alcohol deliveries straight to his hospital room from a local company with “no questions asked”.
One evacuee at the hospital told The Guardian: “There’s a guy who has ordered bottles of wine, spirits and two crates of beer and he’s keeping them in his bedroom. “Tonight he offered me some wine. I felt like I was going into a bar.
“He gave me a paper cup full of wine. I thought: ‘Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous!’
“He’s ordered all of it through this company and they’ve given it to him for free, no questions asked. It’s incredible.”
The UK government is considering a ban on travellers who have recently visited China as the coronavirus outbreak increased today.
The death toll has risen to 636, with three confirmed cases in the UK.
The next 100 Britons evacuated from Wuhan will be quarantined in Milton Keynes, according to reports on the BBC.
The third coronavirus patient in the UK is reportedly a Brit businessman who caught the killer bug in Singapore.
The patient – thought to be in his late 40s or early 50s – walked into A&E in Brighton days after flying back to the UK.
The man had travelled to a business conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Singapore in mid-January, health officials said.
At least two other people, from Malaysia and Korea, have contracted coronavirus after attending the meeting of more than 100 international delegates from an as yet unnamed sales firm.
A test used to diagnose coronavirus is to be rolled out to labs across the UK, says Public Health England (PHE).
The deadly virus is currently tested and diagnosed at just one site in London, but now testing will be extended to 11 more labs.
At its lab in the capital PHE has the capacity to process samples from more than 100 people a day.
Now, to ensure that the country is prepared for further cases, the test will be carried out by trained scientists across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
This will increase testing capacity to more than 1,000 people a day for England alone.
The outbreak could “collapse” UK travel firms, an industry source has claimed, and some companies are already struggling.
It comes as the death toll for the bug hits more than 600, and tens of thousands of people around the world are infected.
Speaking at a travel industry event, Joss Croft, CEO for UKinbound, called for the government to step in to help struggling holiday firms.
He said that UKinbound’s members, which all cater to tourists coming into the UK, are already suffering.
Some business have already reported “desperate cashflow problems” and some could fail before the health crisis is over.
Singapore’s health ministry official Kenneth Mak said authorities had not yet identified the source of infection.
The cases linked to the meeting provide more evidence that the coronavirus is spreading through human-to-human contact outside China, which the World Health Organisation has said is deeply concerning and could signal a much larger outbreak.
The businessman was transferred to a specialist isolation unit at Guy’s Hospital in London and will remain in quarantine for two weeks, health bosses said yesterday.
UK officials are now “ratcheting up” health advice to cover travellers from seven more countries outside China – Singapore, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Macau and Hong Kong.
England’s top doctor said if anyone has been to those nations recently and falls ill should self-isolate and call NHS 111.
Until now, this advice only related to people from Wuhan in China.
Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer of the NHS, also confirmed that doctors will now begin testing anyone showing signs of the illness, if they have recently travelled from Asia to the UK.
