The number of coronavirus cases in the UK dramatically increased on Sunday with 13 new confirmed infections as ministers outlined their “battleplan” for a possible pandemic outbreak.
As the virus reached Scotland and 12 others tested positive in England, health officials scrambled to identify who the infected people had contact with amid fears Covid-19 is now spreading freely within the UK.
Health secretary Matt Hancock has not ruled out putting whole cities on lockdown to quarantine parts of the country should the virus get out of hand.
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Reacting to the new cases — which represented the country’s largest daily leap so far — Boris Johnson said the virus was “now likely to spread a bit more” during a visit to a public health facility in north London, ahead of a Cobra meeting on Monday.
As part of the PM’s so-called “battle plan”, recently-retired doctors and nurses could be asked to return to work in the NHS if the coronavirus outbreak worsens, while emergency powers could be employed to close schools and ban large events.
France has already moved to ban gatherings of more than 5,000 people, which influenced an “almost unanimous” vote by staff at the Louvre to close the legendary museum on Sunday. The country is dealing with more than 100 confirmed cases.
In Iran, the official death toll rose to 52, although on Friday health workers told BBC Persia that the true death toll may actually total more than 200. The government accused the broadcaster of spreading lies.
The UK Foreign Office announced a withdrawal of all non-essential embassy staff and their families, warning it will have limited ability to help Britons in the country if the situation regarding the outbreak deteriorates.
The decision comes after the husband of detained British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe implored Boris Johnson to ensure UK nationals held in the prison were protected, as she shared concerns that she had caught the virus.
At least eight Iranian MPs — including the minister in charge of overseeing the outbreak — have been infected, with one having died as a result.
Meanwhile, two more cases were discovered in Washington, which has declared a state of emergency. As officials sought urgently to find the source of the infections, researchers who studied the two cases warned the virus may have been spreading unfettered for weeks and infected 1,500 people.
The northwestern state saw the first US death on Friday — a patient in their fifties with underlying medical problems. While government officials and agencies released conflicting information on the patient’s gender, Donald Trump praised them as a “wonderful woman”. The US now has 73 confirmed cases.
After Mr Trump was criticised for using the word “hoax” in connection with the virus, which he said was aimed at Democratic criticism over his handling of the outbreak, the vice president was forced to defend controversial comments made by his son, Donald Trump Jr.
The Triggered author claimed to Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade that Democrats “seemingly hope that it comes here, and kills millions of people so that they could end Donald Trump’s streak of winning”.
Mike Pence said it was “understandable” Mr Trump Jr would want to respond to criticism about his father, and suggested the comments had merely been meant to imply that “this is no time for politics”. Mr Pence added: “Well, look, what I am telling you is that this is really a time for us to come together.”
In South Korea, home to the largest outbreak outside of mainland China, anger continued to mount over the role of a cult church in the spread of the virus — whose members account for more than half the country’s cases.
Seoul city government filed a criminal complaint against the Shincheonji Church’s leader Lee Man-hee, who claims to be the Messiah, alleging that he deliberately obstructed official efforts to curb the outbreak by failing to provide an accurate list of his followers, of which there are more than 200,000.
The church is also accused of lying about its missionary efforts to epidemic’s centre in Wuhan in January, but strenuously denies obstructing government efforts and claims to be the subject of a “witch hunt”. Around 9,000 of its members are displaying symptoms for the virus.
Italy also reported a 50 per cent spike in cases in the space of 24 hours, with nearly 1,700 people having tested positive and 34 dying as of Sunday. The cases are mostly clustered in a number of northern regions.
Travel to these regions — popular with snowsport enthusiasts — on Sunday was found to have resulted in the first known case in the Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic, and in Scotland.
A man in Tayside, central Scotland, was diagnosed after travel to north Italy, Holyrood said. Nicola Sturgeon was chairing an emergency meeting in response to the country’s first case, and will attend Boris Johnson’s Cobra meeting on Monday morning.
Additional reporting by agencies
