As well as reducing the risk of coronavirus spreading social distancing could make people's symptoms milder if they do get the illness, scientists say.

It can do this by reducing a patient's viral load - the number of particles of the virus they are first infected with.

Having a high viral load gives an infection a 'jump start' and raises the risk of a patient's immune system becoming overloaded in its battle against COVID-19.

People can slash their chances of a massive initial infection by staying away from others who might be ill and by sticking strictly to the rules against close personal contact which millions of people around the world are now faced with.

Someone infected indirectly by touching a door handle could ultimately end up with milder symptoms than someone who inhales an infected person's cough, experts say.

And this is because it gives the immune system more time to get a handle on the infection before it gets overwhelmed and symptoms start to show.

'In general with respiratory viruses, the outcome of infection – whether you get severely ill or only get a mild cold – can sometimes be determined by how much virus actually got into your body and started the infection off,' says Professor Wendy Barclay, an infectious diseases expert at Imperial College London.

'It’s all about the size of the armies on each side of the battle, a very large virus army is difficult for our immune system's army to fight off.'

The way viruses make people ill is by multiplying rapidly once inside the body and building up in such large numbers that the body takes weeks to destroy them all.

This process is inevitable once someone has caught an infection, but it is possible for people to first become ill with only a small dose of a virus.

This can, in theory, make it easier for their body's immune system 'army' to cope and to fend off the early infection.

In fact, for coronavirus, it seems likely that a large majority of patients become ill under this circumstance and take an unusually long time to notice they're sick.

Because of this, people appear to be spreading COVID-19 more widely than they would if they had a more serious disease.

Dr Michael Skinner, also from Imperial College, said that if someone starts off with a massive amount of the virus it could overload their immune system.

The virus would get a 'jump start' in such circumstances, he suggested, because it would be able to build up faster before the body had time to respond.