A British businessman who returned to the UK after a trip to Singapore has been dubbed the ‘super spreader’ of the coronavirus after fears he has passed on the disease to at least seven others.

The unnamed man, believed to be from Hove, East Sussex, is said to have shown no cold or flu like symptoms after returning from a business conference to the country, after which he also stopped off at a French ski resort, before heading home to his local pub.

Officials are now scrambling to identify the hundreds of people the man in his fifties may have come into contact with, including 183 passengers and six crew on an Easyjet flight from Geneva to London.

The man, understood to be the first UK national to contract the virus, is said to be linked to cases in England, France and Spain.

He is believed to have caught the virus during a four day trip to Singapore for a sales conference for a gas analysis company.

He then took a flight to the Alps to ski in Les Contamines-Montjoie in late January where five more Britons including a nine-year-old boy became infected.

The visit to his local pub, The Grenadier in Hove on Saturday February 1, has also meant that staff there have been told to self-isolate for a fortnight.

A student at Portslade Aldridge Community Academy in Brighton has also been told to isolate himself after fears that he too came in contact with the ‘super spreader’.

EasyJet confirmed that the man took a flight from Geneva to Gatwick Airport on 28 January.

A spokesperson told Metro.co.uk: ‘Public Health England is contacting all passengers who were seated in the vicinity of the customer on flight EZS8481 from Geneva to London Gatwick on 28 January to provide guidance in line with procedures.

‘As the customer was not experiencing any symptoms, the risk to others on board the flight is very low. We remain in contact with the public health authorities and are following their guidance. The health and wellbeing of our passengers and crew is the airline’s highest priority.’

The company said that it had told crew on the flight to ‘monitor themselves for a 14 day period’.

The number of confirmed cases of coronovirus in the UK is believed to have doubled from four to eight.

It comes as the virus claimed the lives of 97 people in one day in China, bringing the total number of deaths in the country to 908.

The number of confirmed cases on the country’s mainland has increased to 40,171.

Some 3,062 new virus cases were reported over the 24 hours until midnight local time on Sunday, which was a 15 per cent increase from Saturday and broke a string of daily declines.

In Japan, 66 more people on a quarantined cruise ship have tested positive for coronavirus, Japan’s health minister said on Monday.

There are now 136 confirmed cases on the Diamond Princess, quarantined in the port of Yokohama, near Tokyo, with officials previously saying 70 people had the virus among the 3,711 passengers and crew.

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