Germany's first confirmed coronavirus patient caught the disease from a Chinese colleague who visited Germany last week, officials said on Tuesday, in the first human-to-human transmission on European soil, according to an AFP tally.

The Chinese employee, a woman from Shanghai, "started to feel sick on the flight home on January 23," Andreas Zapf, head of the Bavarian State Office for Health and Food Safety, said at a press conference.

A 33-year-old German, with whom she had attended a meeting in Bavaria, tested positive for the virus on Monday evening.