Brendan Holmes put his hands out in front of him, as if holding back an imaginary crowd. ‘Look,’ he replied, ‘this is still very early days and we can’t be certain of the R number, the infection rate, of this virus. Remember, as long as that stays below 1.0 – that’s one new individual infected for every human already infected – then we should be able to bring this thing under control. But if it’s higher …’ He paused, as if uncertain whether to voice his fears out loud. ‘Well, if it’s higher, yes, we could be facing a national emergency. So, Clarissa.’ He brightened as he turned to the Senior Scientific Adviser from Porton Down Defence Laboratory. ‘Give us some good news, if you will. What progress on the cure?’

‘Well, this isn’t going to be straightforward,’ Dr Clarissa Gall replied. ‘If we were just dealing with a variation of smallpox, that would be bad enough but manageable – we could always have rushed in stocks from the States and probably shut this thing down overnight. No, I’m afraid this is something much more complex and sinister. Why? Because of the Marburg filovirus it’s been combined with. We’re pulling in expertise from the WHO, and from Atlanta, but we’re still a long way off coming up with a cure.’

The chief medical officer grimaced. ‘So one of the biggest challenges for us now,’ he told the room, ‘is how we sufficiently inform the public without triggering a panic.’ He picked up a sheet of paper that he’d been toying with while Dr Gall spoke. ‘My team have drawn up a communiqué that I’m going to recommend we put up on the website this afternoon.’ He began to read it out.

‘As a precautionary measure, UK scientists are working closely with international experts to implement rapid infection-control procedures for this new virus, provisionally designated as Agent X. These will include, where necessary, tracing, contacting and isolating those people who may have come into contact with infected individuals.’

‘If you don’t mind my saying,’ interjected one of the epidemiologists from Imperial College, ‘that all sounds a bit bland, doesn’t it? I mean, we’re not exactly telling them anything new there, are we? The fact is that Agent X is a man-made, genetically modified pathogen. It hasn’t jumped species in a Chinese wet market. This thing has been deliberately cooked up in a lab with malign intent. I think we owe it to the public to give them a bit more info, don’t you?’

‘Well, I was coming to that,’ replied Brendan Holmes, looking rather piqued. He read out the rest of the communiqué.

‘Initial symptoms of monkey pox include fever, headache, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, chills and exhaustion. A rash can develop, often beginning on the face, then spreading to other parts of the body. The rash finally forms a scab, which later falls off.’

He stopped abruptly.