Five Britons staying at French ski resort diagnosed with coronavirus

Five Britons, including a nine-year-old child, who were staying in a chalet at a French ski resort have been diagnosed with coronavirus.

They tested positive after sharing lodgings with a man who is believed to have contracted the disease in Singapore, said France’s health ministry.

The five, who were staying in Les Contamines-Montjoie, appeared to be linked to a fellow Briton who was there in late January and later confirmed to have the virus after returning to the UK.

All five had been part of a group of 11 Britons who were in the same chalet in the mountainous region of Savoie in eastern France.

They were taken to hospital in the region overnight and are not in a serious condition.

The six other people who came into contact with the virus carrier were also taken to hospitals in Lyon, Saint-Etienne and Grenoble.

There were three children in the group of 11. Among them was a nine-year-old child who recently spent time in a school in Les Contamines-Montjoie – a mountain village of which he was a also resident – as well as in another establishment where he attended French lessons.

French authorities will close two schools next week in the area near the ski resort where the Britons contracted the virus, health official Jean-Yves Grall said.

France’s health minister Agnes Buzyn said the group of newly infected individuals formed “a cluster, a grouping around one original case”.

The British national, who has been diagnosed with coronavirus, was in Singapore on 20-23 January, then stayed for four days from 24 January in the area in eastern France, before returning to England on 28 January.

Two apartments in the ski chalet were being examined, a health official said.

It takes the total number of cases in France to 11.

Need a catch-up? Here’s the latest on the coronavirus:

• The global death toll is 724. 722 were in China, including a Japanese man, and one in the Philippines and Hong Kong
• More than 34,000 people have been infected around the world, almost all in China
• British family of four is being tested in Majorca after coming into contact with a coronavirus sufferer in France
• Thousands remain stranded on cruise ships docked in Japan and Hong Kong
• World Health Organisation warns of a chronic shortage of gowns, masks, gloves and other protective gear
• WHO-led international team investigating the outbreak will leave for China on Monday or Tuesday
• British citizens being flown back from Wuhan on Sunday will be quarantined at a facility in Milton Keynes

The global death toll from the ongoing outbreak is approaching the number of people killed by the 2002-03 SARS epidemic, which was 774.

Some 81 new fatalities have been recorded in Hubei province in China, where Wuhan – the sprawling city where the infection was first reported after Christmas – is located.

The number of new infections rose on Friday from a day earlier, Chinese health officials said, reversing two days of declines and showing the difficulty of predicting the epidemic’s peak.

Japan has confirmed its first national to die from the virus, a man taken to hospital with pneumonia in Wuhan.

The US has confirmed its first death from the virus, a 60-year old US citizen who died at Jinyintan Hospital Wuhan – the epicentre of the outbreak.

Seven more cases have been confirmed in Singapore taking the total there to 40, while the UAE also says it has seven cases of the disease.

Chinese health authorities have also confirmed 2,841 new cases of the new coronavirus in Hubei, taking the total number there up to 24,953, and the province has hosted at least 699 of the 724 total fatalities so far.

China has rushed to build two new hospitals in Wuhan to cope with the crisis, with the second becoming operational from Saturday.

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But demand continues to outstrip supply for beds and medical attention, forcing the city’s special anti-virus command to renovate a school facility and four colleges into temporary hospitals.

There are three confirmed cases in the UK.

They are a man believed to have caught the virus in Singapore who is being treated at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, and two people who were diagnosed in York and are now at a specialist hospital unit in Newcastle.

Other British cases have been reported abroad, including a passenger on the stranded Diamond Princess cruise ship which has been quarantined off the coast of Japan.

About 3,700 passengers and crew are being kept at the port city of Yokohama, about 25 miles from Tokyo, with the operator Princess Cruises hoping the quarantine will end on 19 February barring “unforeseen developments”.

The British man who has been taken off the ship and escorted to hospital after contracting the coronavirus has been named as Alan Steele, 58, who wrote about his diagnosis on Facebook.

Mr Steele is one of 61 people on the cruise liner to have tested positive for coronavirus, with at least 20 of them having since been taken off the luxury ship for treatment.

(c) Sky News 2020: Five Britons staying at French ski resort diagnosed with coronavirus