Britain on Monday said the number of confirmed coronavirus cases had doubled to eight as the government declared the virus a serious and imminent threat, giving it additional powers to isolate those suspected of being infected.
Alarm over the coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, China in December is driven by its rapid spread and the fact that infectious disease experts cannot yet know how deadly or contagious it is.
It has killed more than 900 people, most of them in China, and has spread to at least 27 countries and territories. The two deaths outside mainland China were in Hong Kong and the Philippines.