A number of hospitals in China say they are running out of bed (Picture: Getty)

An infectious disease expert says that the true scale of the coronavirus isn’t being reported by Chinese officials and claims that around 50,000 new cases are emerging in the country daily.

Professor Neil Ferguson, director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, says that the number of cases is ‘going up all the time’.

To put things into context, he said that only 10% of all infections in China are being detected at the current time.

He added that the rate of detection was better overseas, but even then only a quarter of infections were being discovered.




When asked what interventions could be made to combat the rapid spread of the virus that has claimed the lives of 560 people in China, Professor Ferguson said there ‘were limited options’ available to governments and health officials.

He added: ‘We have no vaccine, though vaccines are being rapidly developed, it will take months if not years to develop.’

Professor Neil Ferguson says official figures are not capturing the scale of the problem (Picture: Neil Ferguson)

Professor Ferguson said that public health interventions could be relied upon to identify as many cases as early as possible and isolating people was still the main method to be used to control the spread of the outbreak.

However, he added that it ‘remains to be seen’ whether current measures would be effective, adding that the coronavirus has a much wider range of severity of symptoms.

He said: ‘Quite a lot of people being infected may just have quite mild respiratory disease and might not even seek healthcare for it, if those people are transmitting, then it will be very hard to stop transmission overall’.

His dire warnings came as China says it is running out of beds for thousands of newly infected patients.

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Wuhan City has recently build a new 1,000 hospital to treat coronavirus patients (Picture: Rex Features)

Medical staff members and workers set up beds as they prepare to accept patients (Picture: AFP)

People wear surgical masks in the Chinatown district of London (Picture: EPA)

Authorities in the country say they have converted public buildings into temporary medical facilities to deal with the scale of the problem.

Wuhan city, where the outbreak originated, opened a 1,000 bed new hospital to treat patients.

However, the city of 11 million is facing a severe bed shortage with 8,182 patients admitted to 28 hospitals that have a total of 8,254 beds.

The coronavirus has claimed the lives of 560 people in China (Picture: Barcroft Media)

Meanwhile, a third person in the UK has tested positive for the virus, according to England’s Chief Medical Officer.

Professor Chris Whitty said the person, who did not contract the virus in the UK, is currently being transferred to an infectious diseases centre for treatment.

The Guardian reported that the patient was diagnosed in Brighton and is being transferred to London, where there are infectious diseases units at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and the Royal Free.

The global death toll from coronavirus rose to 565 today, with the number of officially confirmed cases rising to 28,273. Some 260 cases have been recorded outside China.

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