Travellers are still able to return to the UK from at least 10 countries with worsening coronavirus outbreaks without being considered a risk of having the killer infection.
The Government and NHS do not consider people from France, Spain or Germany to be at risk of having coronavirus – even if they have symptoms.
All three have had more than 1,500 cases of the deadly illness and the World Health Organization warns the virus is spreading within each of them.
Official advice changed on February 25 to tell anyone feeling ill after coming home from northern Italy to self-isolate – at the time the country had just 229 patients.
Other tourist hotspots in Europe, including the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Belgium, have all also recorded at least 300 cases.
But the NHS 111 coronavirus helpline only considers Italy and a hotel in Tenerife to at-risk destinations in Europe.
It means travellers who have returned from these countries with a cough – a tell-tale sign of the infection – won’t be told to self-isolate because they aren’t at risk.
As Easter holidays approach there are fears thousands of British families will travel to Europe – now the centre of the world’s coronavirus crisis – and be allowed to roam freely when they come back.
Europe is now the centre of the world’s coronavirus crisis and has more than 19,000 cases, with numbers shooting up by the day as the situation in China stagnates
Travellers face no warnings to self-isolate unless they have been to Italy, Iran, South Korea, China or 11 other Asian countries – but hundreds of new cases are appearing every day across Europe
Meanwhile, some Asian countries are on the list despite having only dozens of cases.
Holidaymakers returning from Cambodia, for example, are told to self-isolate if they feel ill even though the country only has two confirmed cases.
The same goes for Vietnam, which has 31 cases, and Thailand, with 53. Myanmar and Laos haven’t had a single case between them but still appear on the list.
It comes after concerns were raised yesterday that NHS 111 does not advise anyone to isolate themselves unless they have travelled abroad or been in contact with an infected patient.
Coronavirus outbreaks have exploded in France, Germany, Spain and the US in the past week as China has taken a backseat in the global emergency.
France has 1,784 confirmed patients, making it the fourth worst affected country outside of China.
While Spain is now fifth, with 1,695; Germany sixth with 1,565; and the US seventh with 1,565.
People flying into the UK from these countries, however, would be told not take any action if they used the NHS’s online coronavirus risk assessor.
The 111 phone line, through which people may be able to get more detailed advice, is overloaded and answered 340,702 calls in the week ending March 1 – 33 every minute.
People flying into the UK from Gatwick from Italy said they were allowed to travel as normal – they will now be expected to isolate themselves at home for two weeks in case they have caught the coronavirus
British Airways has cancelled all of its flights to and from Italy because of the coronavirus outbreak there (Pictured, a BA arrivals board at Heathrow Airport)
At least 382 people in the UK have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and six have died
Experts say the UK – where the number of coronavirus cases started to take off last week – is just two weeks away from being in a situation as bad as Italy’s
A further six countries have more cases than Italy did when Public Health England changed its advice for returning travellers, but have seen no change.
According to latest data from Johns Hopkins University, which is tracking the outbreak in real-time, Denmark has 340 patients; Belgium 314; Sweden 477; Netherlands 503; Norway 440; and Switzerland 613.
There is no special coronavirus advice for people coming back from those countries.
There are, however, warnings in place for Cambodia (two cases), Hong Kong (118), Japan (581), Laos (0), Macau (10), Malaysia (129), Myanmar (0), Singapore (160), Taiwan (47), Thailand (53) and Vietnam (34).
Madrid alone has almost as many as all those countries combined – 1,024 compared to 1,134 – but people are offered no advice about what to do if they feel ill after visiting.
Official advice tells people to self-isolate even if they feel well if they have been to mainland China, Italy, Iran or the South Korean cities of Daegu or Cheongdo.
Concerns the Government’s health advice is outdated come after MailOnline yesterday revealed the NHS 111 coronavirus triage website was failing to tell the public they needed to self-isolate if they had just come back from Italy.
The site was only instructing people to stay at home if they had been in certain regions in the north, even though the Government advice was officially extended to all of Italy on Monday night.
And the public are being told to do nothing at all if they haven’t left the country in the last two weeks, despite the disease spreading rapidly between people in the UK.
The Italy glitch in the system has since been updated to advise self-isolation for anyone who has been to the country since Monday, March 9.
The Department of Education is coming under pressure today, too, accused of being unable to answer schools’ and parents’ questions about the coronavirus.
MailOnline has asked several Government departments for comment.