Two Indians were prevented from boarding the special Air India flight from Wuhan by the Chinese immigration authorities because both were running high temperatures. The flight carrying over 370 Indians will reach New Delhi early Saturday morning.
An Indian who was on the India bound flight told HT that one of the excluded passengers had a temperature of around 38 degrees C and the other passenger’s temperature was fluctuating.
The barred passengers included a man and a woman and they are likely to be quarantined at a facility in Wuhan and checked for Coronavirus symptoms.
The Indians were taken to the designated airport from different parts of locked down Wuhan in buses on Friday evening and were screened for symptoms of the disease before being allowed to board.
A second flight is likely to be dispatched later to evacuate the remaining Indians in the Hubei province.
As many as 213 people have died and more than 9600 have been infected in the Coronavirus outbreak, which originated in Wuhan and then spread across China and in several other countries including India.
A city of around 11 million people, Wuhan has been under an unprecedented lockdown for more than a week to contain the spread of the virus.
All non-essential entry and exit into the city is currently banned and private vehicles are not allowed to ply within the city.
Earlier this week, the US and Japan were the first countries to evacuate their citizens from the city; UK flew out around 200 nationals earlier on Friday.
The Indians being evacuated from Wuhan will have to be mandatorily quarantined for 14 days after they return.
The quarantine is to ensure that in case anyone among them is a carrier, she or he is not able to infect another person.
Experts say a person can be a carrier even without showing symptoms of the disease and can possibly infect another within a 14-day incubation period.
The Indian embassy got the clearance from the Chinese government’s foreign ministry to fly out its citizens after days of negotiations.
The Chinese were not in the favour of evacuating foreign nationals possibly because the government doesn’t want the disease to spread.
The foreign ministry told HT in a statement earlier this week that China would make appropriate arrangements if any country “insists” on evacuating its nationals.
The Indian Army has set up a quarantine facility in Manesar near Delhi to keep around 300 Indian students being evacuated from China’s Hubei province.
Separately, border-guarding force ITBP has set up a 600-bedded facility in southwest Delhi to quarantine and provide basic medical care to those suspected to have been affected by the coronavirus.
An additional 50-bedded critical care facility has also been set up at the Safdarjung Hospital in the national capital, a Union health ministry statement said.
