The first presumed case of coronavirus has been diagnosed in Northern Ireland while two more people have tested positive across the rest of the UK on Thursday.
The new cases bring the total number of people diagnosed with Covid-19 in the UK to 16.
Northern Ireland’s Public Health Agency announced the case at a briefing in Belfast and said it was “working rapidly” to identify anyone the patient came into contact with to prevent a further spread.
“Viruses don’t recognise boundaries or borders. We will continue to work to protect the population in Northern Ireland,” Northern Ireland’s Chief Medical Officer Dr Michael McBride said.
Asked how many staff are involved in protecting the public, he said it was a “difficult question to answer” because there are a “whole range” of staff playing different roles.
“I couldn’t put a figure on it but it is many, many hundreds of individuals working in this space in a very compressed period of time in a situation evolving rapidly,” he added.
Meanwhile one of the new cases – a parent at a Buxton primary school in Derbyshire – contracted the virus in Tenerife, where 168 Britons are being kept in a hotel on the south west of the island.
Another contracted the virus in Italy, which has become the worst affected country in Europe with more than 400 cases and 14 deaths.
One of the patients in England has been taken to the specialist infectious diseases centre at the Royal Liverpool Hospital and the other to the Royal Free Hospital in London. The NI Public Health Agency would not confirm where their patient was being held.
It comes as England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, warned that onward transmission between people in the UK was “just a matter of time in my view”.