08:58

The number of confirmed cases of Coronavirus in the UK has doubled from four to eight after four more people in Brighton were diagnosed with the infection over the weekend.

The new cases include three men and one woman.

The four have been transferred from Brighton to London to receive specialist care.

Crucially, one of the four had been at the same ski resort near Chamonix in France visited by the patient from Brighton who was moved from the city to the isolation unit at St Thomas’s hospital in central London last Thursday after they were diagnosed with Coronavirus.

The gender of the four new cases, and whether they are adults or children, is not known.

St Thomas’s is one of the NHS’s network of specialist high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) treatment centres in England.

One of the other four confirmed cases is being treated at the HCID unit at the Royal Free hospital in north London and the two Chinese nationals who tested positive for Coronavirus in York are being treated at the HCID centre in Newcastle.