Five men showing symptoms of cough and cold were moved from a quarantine facility in Manesar to the Base Hospital in Delhi Cantonment on Monday. The five were among those evacuated from coronavirus-hit Hubei province.
According to reports, one of five samples has been sent for tests to AIIMS and it has tested negative for coronavirus. Results of the remaining four samples sent today are awaited, an official said.
Reportedly, an official said that any individual suspected to be infected with the novel coronavirus will be shifted to an isolation ward at Delhi Cantonment Base Hospital.
The Indian Army had set up a quarantine facility in Manesar near Delhi to keep over 300 Indian students who were evacuated from China’s Hubei province on Saturday. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police have also prepared a 600-bed facility in Delhi to quarantine and provide basic medical care to those suspected to have been infected with the coronavirus.
Read: 3 confirmed cases in Kerala: State government declares coronavirus outbreak as ‘state disaster’
The Indian government has been extremely proactive in handling the ongoing Coronavirus crisis and has taken effective steps to evacuate Indian citizens who were trapped in China following the global crisis.
The Indian government had sent Air India jumbo B747 to China to evacuate citizens. The Air India flight made two flights to Wuhan city – the epicentre of the coronavirus epidemic. In the first flight on early Saturday, 324 Indians were evacuated and on Sunday another 323 Indians and seven Maldivian citizens were flown back.
This comes at a time when a third positive case of coronavirus has also been confirmed in Kerala on Monday. The patient is a student from Wuhan and is in isolation at a hospital in Kasaragod district. The two other positive cases are also from Kerela and are students who have returned from Wuhan.
Read: Coronavirus: India temporarily suspends e-visa facility for Chinese and foreigners residing in China
The first case of coronavirus in India was reported from Thrissur, Kerala on January 30. The second case was reported from Alappuzha in Southern Kerala. Nearly 70 people have been kept in isolation words in Kerala while 2000 suspected people are kept under surveillance at their homes in different parts of Kerala.
Following the outbreak of coronavirus in the state, the Kerala Government has declared the outbreak a ‘state disaster’.
The 2019-novel coronavirus epidemic that has concerned health experts worldwide broke out in China’s Wuhan city in early December 2019 and has so far claimed more than 300 lives and exposing more than 14,000 people.
The virus is believed to have originated late last year in a food market in the Chinese city of Wuhan that was illegally selling wildlife meat. Health experts think it may have originated in bats and then passed to humans, possibly via another animal species.
