Four new cases of illness in the UK were confirmed this morning, bringing the total to eight.

The government has moved to ensure that anyone in England who's in quarantine for the virus can't just leave by declaring it a serious and imminent threat to public health.

He has our medical correspondent, Fergus Walsh.

This is not Wu Han, but Brighton, where an entire medical center and pharmacy are being deep cleaned.

After two local GPS tested positive for the new Corona virus, along with two other people in Brighton, it seems they were all infected in a ski chalet in France by a British businessman who'd himself got infected in Singapore.

Without realizing he was contagious.

He passed on the virus to around a dozen Britain's all without going anywhere near China.

The detection off this small number of cases could be the spark that becomes a bigger fire, but for no, it's only a spark.

Our objective remains containment.

The longer this outbreak goes on, the more scientists are learning about the new Corona virus.

Latest estimates suggest it kills around one in 100 people who are infected.

That compares with one in 10 people who died from SARS in 2003.

Yet even though the new Corona virus is much less deadly, the death toll has already exceeded that of SARS now more than 900 compared to 774 for SARS.

The reason is that this virus is so mild for huge numbers of people that, unlike SARS, most of those infected never need hospital treatment on this allows it to spread more effectively in the community.

So how bad could it get if the virus starts spreading widely in the UK?

Well, it's very hard to know.

But seasonal flu in England alone kills between 10,000 and 30,000 people each year, most but not all over the age of 65.

Nearly 200 Britons have bean repatriated from Wuhan since the end of January, under in quarantine in Milton, Keen's and Merseyside.

At the weekend, one person threatened to leave Arrow Park Hospital, so emergency regulations have Bean brought in allowing forcible detention.

But most seemed happy with the conditions.

There are all sorts of games available.

We've obviously got TVs.

We've got access to the Internet.

It's Netflix.

So all these different things that are actually available to us do help Thio make this feel not like we're stuck in quarantine.

In Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, the growth in new cases has started to slow.

But it's too early to know whether this epidemic can be contained.

President Xi Jinping, shown having his temperature taken in Beijing, promised total warfare to beat the virus thing is one of the biggest challenges China has faced in decades.

And the impact both medical and economic, are being felt around the world.