A government plan to bring back Britons stranded in Wuhan by the coronavirus poses a "severe potential risk" of infecting healthy people, a former health secretary has said.

Lord Lansley, who was a Conservative health secretary in the coalition government, told Sky News that putting Britons on a plane "increases the chance of their transmitting the infection from one to another, then brings them to United Kingdom and, and the transmission starts from it".

He said the evacuation was being done not to protect public health but for "humanitarian" reasons, and that officials must be careful to enforce the 14-day quarantine period.

Image: Andrew Lansley was health secretary during the coalition government

Lord Lansley said: "One must be blunt about this.

"In normal circumstances from a public health point of view, moving any group of people from a place where there is infection to one where there isn't, is not on the face of it a public health measure."


He said Britain faces an even bigger challenge with potentially a couple of thousand people having returned to the UK, from Wuhan province in particular, in the last two or three weeks.

"The incubation period we seem to be finding with this virus (is) that it can have a relatively long incubation period, it could take 10 days or more. And in the early stages it is without symptoms.

"We are in truth only dealing with something which has really only been - of which we've been seriously aware - for about 20 days."

Sky News understands the Britons being flown back will be quarantined in a facility on the Wirral.

Lord Lansley said there was a natural tendency to send in planes once other countries, such as America, had pledged to do so.

"I think it was inevitable that other countries were going to do the same thing," said Lord Lansley.

Evacuation of Britons from Wuhan delayed

The British nationals were due to leave the Chinese city on Thursday morning but the plane was not able to take off as Chinese authorities had not yet given clearance.

Lord Lansley said the goal of the British government at this stage in a crisis would be to buy time.

"We want wherever possible with a new virus to win time.

"And I think that's what they're really focusing on at the moment - the containment of the virus for a sufficient period of time that we stand a chance in the development ideally, of a vaccine, and, if necessary, anti-viral agents and other countermeasures to try and limit what would subsequently be the transmission. A mortality rate of 3% is significant."

Coronavirus: Death toll continues to rise

He said China had become far easier to deal with than during the SARS outbreak and was now "rapid in their response" and "transparent".

"I would say from those I've talked to who have experienced back in 2003, where the SARS outbreak is concerned, and what they look at today.They would say that it is a transformed environment," said the former health secretary.