Liverpool cancer surgeon with coronavirus and ‘may have infected hundreds of patients after failing to self-isolate’ – as Great Ormond Street children’s hospital cancels heart ops as worker is hit by disease
- Senior surgeon at Liverpool’s Aintree University Hospital caught virus in Italy
- Returned to work as normal last week where he operated on scores of patients
- Comes as ‘health professional’ at Great Ormond Street hospital tested positive
- Children’s hospital cancelled heart ops and transplants for two weeks as result
Fears hundreds of vulnerable patients have been infected with coronavirus were sparked today after an infected surgeon ‘failed to self isolate’.
The senior surgeon at Liverpool’s Aintree University Hospital contracted the virus on a family skiing holiday in northern Italy in late February and went back to work as normal last week.
The father operated on scores of people with a range of chronic conditions including cancer while infected with the fiercely contagious illness. He normally treats up to 400 patients a week.
It comes as Great Ormond Street hospital cancelled surgery for children with serious heart problems for two weeks after one of its ‘health professionals’ tested positive.
The world-famous children’s hospital in London is suspending all heart operations and transplants on youngsters until March 23 following the diagnosis.
Patients with underlying health problems are most at risk of suffering deadly complications from the virus due to their weakened immune systems.
Britain is braced for an explosion of thousands of cases in the coming weeks as health officials struggle to contain the virus. So far 321 people have caught it and six have died.
The senior surgeon at Liverpool’s Aintree University Hospital (shown) contracted the virus on a family skiing holiday in northern Italy in late February and went back to work as normal last week
It comes as Great Ormond Street hospital cancelled surgery for children with serious heart problems for two weeks after one of its ‘health professionals’ tested positive
Britain is braced for an explosion of thousands of cases in the coming weeks as health officials struggle to contain the virus. So far 321 people have caught it and six have died
The Liverpool doctor arrived back in the UK after the Italy trip on February 29 and went to work just two days later on March 2.
At the time the Government said people returning from northern Italy – Europe’s coronavirus epicentre – did not have to self-isolate unless they were showing flu-like symptoms.
It is unclear whether the surgeon was showing symptoms when he flew back to the UK.
The surgeon is believed to have attended a team meeting at Aintree University Hospital last Wednesday with dozens of other doctors who went on to treat countless other patients, The Sun reports.
He fell ill a day later and was asked to go home before later testing positive for the killer virus.
Members of staff who attended the meeting have since fallen ill and are waiting on test results to hear if they caught it.
Experts say the UK – where the number of coronavirus cases started to take off last week – is just two weeks away from being in a situation as bad as Italy’s
A man with underlying health conditions in his 80s has become the UK’s sixth coronavirus death. NHS officials confirmed the man – who hasn’t been identified – died last night at the Watford General Hospital (pictured)
IS THE UK HEADING FOR AN ITALIAN-STYLE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS?
The UK could be heading straight for a coronavirus crisis like the one which has crippled Italy, leading experts have warned.
Italy last night put all of its 60million people into lockdown and banned movement between cities in a drastic bid to contain the outbreak, which has infected 9,000 people.
But one scientist tracking the outbreak in the UK said Britain is following the same trajectory and could end up in a similar situation as Italy within two weeks.
The number of cases in Italy has rocketed from just three on February 21 to at least 9,172. While in the UK it has jumped from nine to 321.
Professor Mark Handley, at University College London, compared the rate of coronavirus infection in Italy, which is in crisis, to that in the UK, Germany, France, Spain, the US and Switzerland and found they’re growing at the same rate
A source told the paper: ‘He came back and even though everyone knew if they travelled to that part, they should self-isolate, he didn’t and he went back to the hospital on the Monday.
‘He’s done surgery on patients and it was only on the Wednesday he started to feel ill. It’s very worrying for his patients and also for colleagues who have come into contact with him.
‘He has a lot of expertise and is highly regarded and very experienced, so it is surprising he stepped foot in that hospital until he’d spent two weeks in self-quarantine.’
Meanwhile, Great Ormond Street today became the latest NHS hospital to suspend services due to staff catching coronavirus.
Hospital bosses cancelled hesrt operations and transplants for children for two weeks and have suspended outpatient clinics for under-18s with cardiac conditions.
The hospital treats the UK’s most seriously ill children, who are most at risk of falling seriously ill with coronavirus.
Great Ormond Street did not reveal the name of the infected health professional or say if it was a doctor, nurse or other member of staff.
In its statement on its website, it said: ‘A healthcare professional who works in our cardiology department has tested positive for coronavirus (COVID-19).
‘We would like to reassure our families that anybody who came into close contact with this individual is being informed and will be offered advice.
‘The majority of services are unaffected and all essential treatment is being carried out, and to ensure patient and staff safety the cardiology department will not be carrying out non-essential cardiac procedures including surgery and outpatients.
‘This is for a period of two weeks from Monday 9 March and will be subject to daily review. Any patient affected by this change will be contacted directly.’
The hospital did not say if any patients or other staff were now in isolation following the health worker’s diagnosis.
A Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust spokesman said: ‘We can confirm that a member of staff based at Aintree University Hospital has tested positive for COVID-19 after recently returning from a holiday in Italy.
‘The safety of our patients and staff is our top priority and we are working with Public Health England and NHS England to inform and advise everyone who may have come into contact with this individual.’
A family are pictured wearing face masks outside Buckingham Palace on Monday
The entire of Italy is now in lockdown and citizens are forbidden from travelling between cities (Pictured, a solder stands guard outside the Duomo Cathedral in Milan)
Italy is at the centre of Europe’s coronavirus outbreak – at least 9,172 people have been diagnosed with the infection and 463 people have died
It comes after scientists found the average incubation period of the killer virus was 5.1 days.
It means the infected health workers probably went a working week before falling ill and showing symptoms. But during that time they would have still been infectious to others.
More people contracted the virus in the UK than in China for the first time yesterday – 46 people caught it in Britain compared to 45 in China.
Since February 21, the number of cases in Britain has rocketed from just nine to 321. A senior medical officer in the government has admitted ‘many thousands’ of Britons will get infected and bestselling British author and former doctor, Adam Kay, warned in a tweet: ‘This is us in a fortnight’.
University College London biology professor, Dr Francis Balloux, said: ‘The trajectory of the epidemic in the UK is so far roughly comparable to the one in Northern Italy, but with the epidemic in Northern Italy two to three weeks ahead of the situation in the UK.’
Dr Balloux said that it was possible the UK could face a similar lockdown to the one which has brought Italy to its knees.
It comes a day after England’s chief medical officer said people with symptoms as minor as coughs and colds may have to self-isolate within the next two weeks, regardless of travel history, as the crisis escalates.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE CORONAVIRUS?
Someone who is infected with the coronavirus can spread it with just a simple cough or a sneeze, scientists say.
More than 4,000 people with the virus are now confirmed to have died and more than 110,000 have been infected. Here’s what we know so far:
What is the coronavirus?
A coronavirus is a type of virus which can cause illness in animals and people. Viruses break into cells inside their host and use them to reproduce itself and disrupt the body’s normal functions. Coronaviruses are named after the Latin word ‘corona’, which means crown, because they are encased by a spiked shell which resembles a royal crown.
The coronavirus from Wuhan is one which has never been seen before this outbreak. It has been named SARS-CoV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. The name stands for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2.
Experts say the bug, which has killed around one in 50 patients since the outbreak began in December, is a ‘sister’ of the SARS illness which hit China in 2002, so has been named after it.
The disease that the virus causes has been named COVID-19, which stands for coronavirus disease 2019.
Dr Helena Maier, from the Pirbright Institute, said: ‘Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that infect a wide range of different species including humans, cattle, pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and wild animals.
‘Until this new coronavirus was identified, there were only six different coronaviruses known to infect humans. Four of these cause a mild common cold-type illness, but since 2002 there has been the emergence of two new coronaviruses that can infect humans and result in more severe disease (Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronaviruses).
‘Coronaviruses are known to be able to occasionally jump from one species to another and that is what happened in the case of SARS, MERS and the new coronavirus. The animal origin of the new coronavirus is not yet known.’
The first human cases were publicly reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan, where approximately 11million people live, after medics first started publicly reporting infections on December 31.
By January 8, 59 suspected cases had been reported and seven people were in critical condition. Tests were developed for the new virus and recorded cases started to surge.
The first person died that week and, by January 16, two were dead and 41 cases were confirmed. The next day, scientists predicted that 1,700 people had become infected, possibly up to 7,000.
Just a week after that, there had been more than 800 confirmed cases and those same scientists estimated that some 4,000 – possibly 9,700 – were infected in Wuhan alone. By that point, 26 people had died.
By January 27, more than 2,800 people were confirmed to have been infected, 81 had died, and estimates of the total number of cases ranged from 100,000 to 350,000 in Wuhan alone.
By January 29, the number of deaths had risen to 132 and cases were in excess of 6,000.
By February 5, there were more than 24,000 cases and 492 deaths.
By February 11, this had risen to more than 43,000 cases and 1,000 deaths.
A change in the way cases are confirmed on February 13 – doctors decided to start using lung scans as a formal diagnosis, as well as laboratory tests – caused a spike in the number of cases, to more than 60,000 and to 1,369 deaths.
By February 25, around 80,000 people had been infected and some 2,700 had died. February 25 was the first day in the outbreak when fewer cases were diagnosed within China than in the rest of the world.
Where does the virus come from?
According to scientists, the virus almost certainly came from bats. Coronaviruses in general tend to originate in animals – the similar SARS and MERS viruses are believed to have originated in civet cats and camels, respectively.
The first cases of COVID-19 came from people visiting or working in a live animal market in Wuhan, which has since been closed down for investigation.
Although the market is officially a seafood market, other dead and living animals were being sold there, including wolf cubs, salamanders, snakes, peacocks, porcupines and camel meat.
A study by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, published in February 2020 in the scientific journal Nature, found that the genetic make-up virus samples found in patients in China is 96 per cent identical to a coronavirus they found in bats.
However, there were not many bats at the market so scientists say it was likely there was an animal which acted as a middle-man, contracting it from a bat before then transmitting it to a human. It has not yet been confirmed what type of animal this was.
Dr Michael Skinner, a virologist at Imperial College London, was not involved with the research but said: ‘The discovery definitely places the origin of nCoV in bats in China.
‘We still do not know whether another species served as an intermediate host to amplify the virus, and possibly even to bring it to the market, nor what species that host might have been.’
So far the fatalities are quite low. Why are health experts so worried about it?
Experts say the international community is concerned about the virus because so little is known about it and it appears to be spreading quickly.
It is similar to SARS, which infected 8,000 people and killed nearly 800 in an outbreak in Asia in 2003, in that it is a type of coronavirus which infects humans’ lungs. It is less deadly than SARS, however, which killed around one in 10 people, compared to approximately one in 50 for COVID-19.
Another reason for concern is that nobody has any immunity to the virus because they’ve never encountered it before. This means it may be able to cause more damage than viruses we come across often, like the flu or common cold.
Speaking at a briefing in January, Oxford University professor, Dr Peter Horby, said: ‘Novel viruses can spread much faster through the population than viruses which circulate all the time because we have no immunity to them.
‘Most seasonal flu viruses have a case fatality rate of less than one in 1,000 people. Here we’re talking about a virus where we don’t understand fully the severity spectrum but it’s possible the case fatality rate could be as high as two per cent.’
If the death rate is truly two per cent, that means two out of every 100 patients who get it will die.
‘My feeling is it’s lower,’ Dr Horby added. ‘We’re probably missing this iceberg of milder cases. But that’s the current circumstance we’re in.
‘Two per cent case fatality rate is comparable to the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 so it is a significant concern globally.’
How does the virus spread?
The illness can spread between people just through coughs and sneezes, making it an extremely contagious infection. And it may also spread even before someone has symptoms.
It is believed to travel in the saliva and even through water in the eyes, therefore close contact, kissing, and sharing cutlery or utensils are all risky.
Originally, people were thought to be catching it from a live animal market in Wuhan city. But cases soon began to emerge in people who had never been there, which forced medics to realise it was spreading from person to person.
There is now evidence that it can spread third hand – to someone from a person who caught it from another person.
What does the virus do to you? What are the symptoms?
Once someone has caught the COVID-19 virus it may take between two and 14 days, or even longer, for them to show any symptoms – but they may still be contagious during this time.
If and when they do become ill, typical signs include a runny nose, a cough, sore throat and a fever (high temperature). The vast majority of patients will recover from these without any issues, and many will need no medical help at all.
In a small group of patients, who seem mainly to be the elderly or those with long-term illnesses, it can lead to pneumonia. Pneumonia is an infection in which the insides of the lungs swell up and fill with fluid. It makes it increasingly difficult to breathe and, if left untreated, can be fatal and suffocate people.
Figures are showing that young children do not seem to be particularly badly affected by the virus, which they say is peculiar considering their susceptibility to flu, but it is not clear why.
What have genetic tests revealed about the virus?
Scientists in China have recorded the genetic sequences of around 19 strains of the virus and released them to experts working around the world.
This allows others to study them, develop tests and potentially look into treating the illness they cause.
Examinations have revealed the coronavirus did not change much – changing is known as mutating – much during the early stages of its spread.
However, the director-general of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Gao Fu, said the virus was mutating and adapting as it spread through people.
This means efforts to study the virus and to potentially control it may be made extra difficult because the virus might look different every time scientists analyse it.
More study may be able to reveal whether the virus first infected a small number of people then change and spread from them, or whether there were various versions of the virus coming from animals which have developed separately.
How dangerous is the virus?
The virus has a death rate of around two per cent. This is a similar death rate to the Spanish Flu outbreak which, in 1918, went on to kill around 50million people.
Experts have been conflicted since the beginning of the outbreak about whether the true number of people who are infected is significantly higher than the official numbers of recorded cases. Some people are expected to have such mild symptoms that they never even realise they are ill unless they’re tested, so only the more serious cases get discovered, making the death toll seem higher than it really is.
However, an investigation into government surveillance in China said it had found no reason to believe this was true.
Dr Bruce Aylward, a World Health Organization official who went on a mission to China, said there was no evidence that figures were only showing the tip of the iceberg, and said recording appeared to be accurate, Stat News reported.
Can the virus be cured?
The COVID-19 virus cannot be cured and it is proving difficult to contain.
Antibiotics do not work against viruses, so they are out of the question. Antiviral drugs can work, but the process of understanding a virus then developing and producing drugs to treat it would take years and huge amounts of money.
No vaccine exists for the coronavirus yet and it’s not likely one will be developed in time to be of any use in this outbreak, for similar reasons to the above.
The National Institutes of Health in the US, and Baylor University in Waco, Texas, say they are working on a vaccine based on what they know about coronaviruses in general, using information from the SARS outbreak. But this may take a year or more to develop, according to Pharmaceutical Technology.
Currently, governments and health authorities are working to contain the virus and to care for patients who are sick and stop them infecting other people.
People who catch the illness are being quarantined in hospitals, where their symptoms can be treated and they will be away from the uninfected public.
And airports around the world are putting in place screening measures such as having doctors on-site, taking people’s temperatures to check for fevers and using thermal screening to spot those who might be ill (infection causes a raised temperature).
However, it can take weeks for symptoms to appear, so there is only a small likelihood that patients will be spotted up in an airport.
Is this outbreak an epidemic or a pandemic?
The outbreak is an epidemic, which is when a disease takes hold of one community such as a country or region.
Although it has spread to dozens of countries, the outbreak is not yet classed as a pandemic, which is defined by the World Health Organization as the ‘worldwide spread of a new disease’.
The head of WHO’s global infectious hazard preparedness, Dr Sylvie Briand, said: ‘Currently we are not in a pandemic. We are at the phase where it is an epidemic with multiple foci, and we try to extinguish the transmission in each of these foci,’ the Guardian reported.
She said that most cases outside of Hubei had been ‘spillover’ from the epicentre, so the disease wasn’t actually spreading actively around the world.
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