The special Air India flight Boeing 747 brought back 324 Indian nationals from the deadly Coronavirus (CoV)-hit Wuhan city in China that has killed more than 250 people. The plane reached Delhi around 7.30 am with the passengers and five doctors from Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital and one paramedical staff on board.
The passengers including 3 minors and 211 students will undergo thorough medical examination, because of risk of infected people exposing the fellow passengers and flight staff to the CoV.
“Six passengers were offloaded as they had high temperatures,” news agency ANI quoted a passenger as saying.
Another special Air India flight will go to China today from Delhi to Wuhan, for the evacuation of the rest of the stranded Indians.
The Indians who were evacuated from Wuhan have been quarantined in a specially prepared facility in Manesar near Delhi, the Indian Army, which has mounted a full-fledged operation for this purpose, said. The facility will house approximately 300 students who will be observed for signs of infection for two weeks by a team of doctors and medical personnel.
The 95 of the 234 Indians who have returned from the current flight have been taken from the Airport to Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) Chhawla Camp in Delhi, for medical observation. Indian Army which has made special arrangements has set up a quarantine facility in Manesar near Delhi. Officials said they would be monitored for any signs of infection for duration of two weeks by a qualified team of doctors and staff members.
The quarantine is necessary as experts say the incubation period of the new virus was on average three to seven days, with the longest being 14 days.
During the screening, the returning students will be classified into three groups.
The first group will be suspect cases where individuals with any signs of fever and/or cough and/or respiratory distress will be directly transferred to Base Hospital Delhi Cantonment.
The second group would be ‘close contact’, comprising individuals without symptoms but having visited a seafood/animal market or a health facility or having come into contact with a Chinese person with symptoms in the last 14 days will be escorted in an earmarked vehicle directly to the quarantine facility.
The third group would be non-contact case. “Any individual without any symptom(s) or contact or who does not fit into either (a) or (b) will also be clubbed along with the close contact category and sent to the quarantine facility,” the officer said.
The quarantine facility consists of accommodation barracks for the returned Indians, administrative areas and medical facility area.
To prevent mass outbreak, the facility has been divided into sectors, each with a maximum capacity of 50 individuals each.
“Each barrack has been further subdivided into barracks. The population of sectors will not be allowed to intermingle with each other,” the officer said.
All the people who will be kept in the quarantine facility will wear three-layered masks and will be examined daily and after 14 days if they show no symptoms of the CoV they will be allowed to leave. However, they will be under state surveillance and will be followed-up with their medical records forwarded to concerned authorities for necessary check-ups.
The flight had departed from Delhi airport at 1.17 pm on Friday to evacuate Indian nationals from China, where more than 250 people – none of them Indian – have died due to novel coronavirus.
A positive case of the deadly novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in India has been reported from the southern state of Kerala. This is reportedly the first confirmed case in India.
A student, who was studying at Wuhan University in China and recently returned to his home state, has been confirmed of being infected with the virus. As per reports, the patient is stable and is being closely monitored.
The flight had departed from Delhi airport at 1.17 pm on Friday to evacuate Indian nationals from China.
Meanwhile, the death toll from the viral epidemic in China has risen to 259 with total confirmed cases surging to 11,791 amid stepped up efforts by a number of countries to evacuate their nationals from Hubei province, the epicentre of the virus, officials said on Saturday.
Air India has cancelled its flight to Shanghai from January 31 to February 14.
The new virus, which is of the same genre as SARS of 2003, was first reported in WHO Disease outbreak news on January 5 in China’s Wuhan. Till now, it has progressively spread across many countries.
However, the new virus has spread at a much faster pace than the 2003 SARS epidemic.
The Coronavirus has caused alarm because of its similarity to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.
The Coronavirus is a large family of viruses that causes illnesses ranging from the common cold to acute respiratory syndromes, but the virus in China is a novel strain and not seen before.
The symptoms of infection include fever, cough and breathing problems.