Midfield Meat's Dean McKenna said the staff members had travelled home to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

He said during this time the company became aware of the virus and advised the staff not to return to Australia.

"Midfield has told these employees to stay where they are until such a time that the situation is better understood," Mr McKenna said.

"They've been told not to return to Australia or to work."

Mr McKenna said other staff had been advised that if they travelled to China they would be told the same thing.

He said the coronavirus was having a small impact on the business, which exports some products to China.

"Ships are getting quarantined in different parts of the world," Mr McKenna said.

"It's slowing up trade."

Mr McKenna said the company's greatest fear was that if the virus was not contained soon, it would not be able to source packaging for its products.

He said a lot of the packaging the company sourced was produced in factories in China, which were closed due to the virus.

"That's our biggest concern," Mr McKenna said.

The Standard revealed earlier this month the virus has already had a major impact on the south-west's crayfish and abalone industries.

His comments come as the World Health Organisation revealed the first vaccine for the coronavirus may be 18 months away.

As the epidemic squeezed the world's second-biggest economy, Chinese firms struggled to get back to work after the extended Lunar New Year holiday, hundreds of them saying they would need loans running into billions of dollars to stay afloat, The Age reports.

China's foremost medical adviser on the outbreak, Zhong Nanshan, said numbers of new cases were falling in some provinces and forecast the epidemic would peak this month.

"I hope this outbreak or this event may be over in something like April," added Mr Nanshan, 83, an epidemiologist who won fame for his role in combating an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003.

More than 1000 people have died from the virus in China, where there are more than 42,000 cases.

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