New Delhi/Beijing/Thiruvananthapuram: The Ministry of External Affairs on Tuesday made a formal request to China for facilitating evacuation of Indians from Wuhan, the epicentre of novel coronavirus outbreak.
The Civil Aviation Ministry will make necessary arrangements for the evacuation after the approval of Chinese authorities, the Health Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. Air India has a 423-seater jumbo flight ready at Mumbai airport for the purpose, an official source said Tuesday.
However, when contacted, the airline's CMD Ashwani Lohani said that the flight is ready to operate, but did not divulge the date or other details. The Indian embassy in Beijing is in contact with the Indian nationals there.
"On evacuation, these individuals will be kept in quarantine for 14 days. Necessary arrangements in this regard are being made," the statement said.
India's civil aviation regulator DGCA has already given its clearance to the airline to operate the Mumbai-Delhi-Wuhan flight.
Risks in the rescue mission
According to sources, the major worry with regard to evacuating Indians from Wuhan and other affected areas is about screening the people boarding the flight. Moreover, the passengers have to be constantly monitored during the flight and need to be quarantined after reaching Delhi.
"Do we have the required infrastructure to deal with this? The aircraft, crew and the passengers from Wuhan have to be isolated and only after ruling out infection they should be allowed to leave," a source said.
He added that it is a complicated issue as India cannot shrug off its responsibility.
"So, infected or not infected, they have to be brought back," the source said.
The death toll from a new coronavirus in China rose sharply to 132 on Wednesday with nearly 1,500 new cases, as Japan said it flew citizens out of the central city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak.
Screening at airports extended
The Health Ministry is procuring more thermal scanners for faster screening of passengers' exposure to the novel coronavirus. Four more labs, besides NIV Pune, have been geared up for testing clinical samples, it said.
Till Monday, 155 flights were screened with a total of 33,552 passengers. Samples of 20 passengers have been tested by NIV Pune so far and all were found negative, the statement said.
It also said that Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba on Tuesday reviewed the preparedness to deal with the deadly virus. The meeting was informed that the Ministry of Shipping has initiated screening at all major ports.
Screening of passengers with 'travel history' from China has been extended to 13 more airports, taking the total to 20.
The Health Ministry is reviewing the preparedness and screening in all the states on a daily basis through video conferencing with chief secretaries and state health secretaries.
Apart from increasing the number of airports to do thermal screening of passengers, the Centre has stepped up vigil in areas bordering Nepal in view of a confirmed case of nCoV detected there.
No confirmed case so far in India
Asserting that there was no confirmed case of the novel Coronavirus (nCoV), Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said India was making all efforts to detect and check the spread of the virus.
As the deadly virus continued to spread in various provinces in China, Indian students, hailing from various states including Gujarat, have expressed their desire to return. "Indian Embassy is in constant touch with the Chinese government. To evacuate students and other Indians from Wuhan, we are planning to send a plane there. Our efforts are on to bring them back. It will take some days. I urge people to trust the government on this," S Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, told reporters on his arrival at the Vadodara airport in Gujarat.
"No Indian student has been found to be affected by this virus. Parents need not worry about their children," he said.
The Indian nationals, mostly students, research scholars and professionals are working in Indian and international companies in China's Hubei province.
WHO against evacuation
Meanwhile, Chinese Ambassador to India Sun Weidong retweeted Foreign Minister Wang Yi's message to say that the WHO does not recommend the evacuation of nationals, and called on the international community to remain calm and not overreact.
"The WHO is confident in China's epidemic prevention and control ability," Sun tweeted.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the chief of the UN health body, on Tuesday had said that the WHO "does not recommend the evacuation" of foreign nationals from China's virus-hit Hubei province.
His remarks during his meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi came as India, US and several other countries are finalising plans to evacuate their citizens from Hubei province, the epicentre of the virus outbreak.
While more than a dozen countries around the world have confirmed cases of the deadly virus, India is making all efforts to detect and check its spread.
Several states including Kerala, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan have kept some people, with travel history to China, under observation after they showed novel coronavirus-like symptoms.
As per the World Health Organisation (WHO), Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
The deadly virus is said to have spread from a seafood and an animal market in Wuhan, and is suspected to have spread to as far as the US.
(With inputs from PTI and Reuters)
