Another group of UK citizens was able to leave the epicenter of rampant coronavirus outbreak in the central Chinese province of Hubei on Sunday on a French government-chartered flight from Wuhan, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said during an appearance on Sky News
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd February, 2020) Another group of UK citizens was able to leave the epicenter of rampant coronavirus outbreak in the central Chinese province of Hubei on Sunday on a French government-chartered flight from Wuhan, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said during an appearance on Sky news.
"There is a further French flight that is expected back in Europe today [Sunday] and that will carry some UK nationals," Raab said.
He said it was an example of how the United Kingdom continues productive cooperation with its EU partners - first of all, Spain and France in this case - after leaving the bloc.
According to Raab, in an area as big as Hubei, a province with a size nine times of that of Wales, "the challenges have been immense" to coordinate the evacuation in terms of getting a foreign aircraft in and gathering all those who wanted to leave from across the province in one spot.
The foreign secretary said he could not confirm the precise number of evacuees, but according to UK media reports they were 11 people who would be quarantined for two weeks upon the arrival. They will join the first group of 83 evacuated UK citizens from Hubei that arrived last Friday. As of Monday, The United Kingdom has two confirmed infection cases, members of the same family.
The flight has already landed in France with 264 passengers on board from 30 countries. Among them were 20 French nationals who at the time of boarding displayed mild symptoms typical of cold rather than coronavirus, the French Health Ministry official Adrien Taquet said during an appearance at BFMTV.
"We had to take them under control, which we did once they arrived at the military base in Istres. All tests were negative," he said.
"Five Czech nationals who used to be in the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China returned home overnight Monday. First, they were flown to a military airbase in southern France along with 250 citizens from about 30 European countries and then to Brussels where they were picked up by the Czech Defense Ministry's Yakovlev Yak-40 aircraft with a doctor on board that took them home," Prague Public Health Authority spokesman Zbynek Boublik said.
Two Slovak nationals were taken to Prague as well and currently are en route to their own country on two medical vehicles, according to Slovak Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini. All seven Eastern European evacuees will reportedly be placed under a standard 14-day quarantine.
Wuhan and several other Chinese cities remain closed amid the raging outbreak. The current toll of lethal cases stands at 361 and 17,255 people count infected worldwide. The number of people who recovered after catching the infection has significantly increased overnight and currently stands at 479.
According to the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, over 20 million medical masks are being produced daily to cater nation-wide - they are a government-prescribed protection measure against the virus spread. Among other inhibition items supplied to Wuhan, an official from the ministry listed 154,500 protective suits and 133,600 more advanced respiratory masks, as well as more diagnostic reagents which local health institutions can now purchase directly from the producer.
In Thailand, where health authorities have conducted an experimental treatment of 2019-nCoV with HIV and flu medications, the results were announced on Sunday: the inflammation in a female patient was soothed in 48 hours and the infection was completely gone in several days.
As of Monday, eight of 19 coronavirus-positive patients in Thailand have recovered, all but one of the Chinese tourists who arrived in Thailand over the past month and a Thai female with a recent travel history in Wuhan. Of the remaining 11 patients, ten are tourists from China and the remaining one is a Thai taxi driver who gave Chinese tourists a ride to the airport, according to the Thai Government Public Relations Department.
Up until recently, coronavirus-detection tests took 1-2 days per patient to be taken twice, but the new Real Time RT-PCR testers brought it down to six hours without the need to be re-taken. South Korea said that once the new testers become available for its 532 specialized medical centers, their staff will be testing people even with the slightest suspicion of 2019-nCoV regardless of whether they had traveled to China or not. There are 15 confirmed coronavirus cases in South Korea at the moment, 70 others are undergoing tests in addition to 678 under surveillance over being in close contact with infected individuals.
In the meantime, as the infection toll has been increasing hour upon hour, countries worldwide began issuing travel bans to China.
The South Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare said on Monday that it was considering to alter the government recommendation to citizens from "to refrain from travel [to China]" to "evacuate," as well as to ban touristic trips to Chins with a subsequent cut of air and sea traffic. The Czech Republic, too, has said that it was mulling halting direct air traffic with China, Prime Minister Andrej Babis said during an appearance on tv Nova. There are currently 12 Prague-bound flights from China carried out weekly by Chinese airlines.
"Travel recommendations have been revised, the public has been informed about the need to refrain from traveling to China. Anyone who has visited China since January 15 might be placed in quarantine," the Indian Health Ministry said in a statement. According to the statement, the country also stopped issuing e-visas to Chinese applicants and temporarily canceled those issued already.
Russia, in addition to curbing traffic with neighboring China, went on to suspending all passenger traffic with North Korea as well, Sputnik has learned from the Russian embassy in Pyongyang.
According to the Russian embassy in Beijing, there are currently 183 confirmed Russian nationals in Hubei, and Sputnik has learned from the local Federal Security Service branch in China-bordering eastern administrative region that 11 of them will return to Russia on Monday, while 85 Chinese nationals, on the contrary, will go back to their country. The exchange will be carried out via the Nizhneleninskoye checkpoint, the service's representative told us. Russian health authorities have so far confirmed two coronavirus cases - both in Chinese nationals, one of them being a female student of a technical university in Tyumen who is under constant medical supervision and feels well, according to the local health department.
Australia has brought 243 of its nationals home from Wuhan on a Qantas 747 flight on Monday to be quarantined for two weeks on Christmas Island. According to Foreign Minister Marise Payne, this first evacuation board prioritized the most vulnerable categories of citizens, including children, youth and the elderly. According to her earlier statement, there were a total of 600 Australians in Wuhan who asked to be evacuated.
China has pledged to facilitate evacuation efforts of foreign nationals by their respective governments in line with the international practice and national task force for the infection inhibition, as stated by Chines Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
