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Two more planes evacuate Americans from virus-hit Wuhan
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Personnel in biological hazard suits await passengers evacuated from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the heart of a growing outbreak of the deadly 2019 Novel Coronavirus shortly after the plane landed at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, California on January 29, 2020. Some 200 US citizens evacuated from Wuhan were met on the tarmac by emergency vehicles and three buses. The Department of Defense said the evacuees will be sent to local hospitals if they are suspected of being infected with the 2019 Novel Coronavirus. The epidemic has killed more than 130 people and spread around the world since it first emerged in a live food market in Wuhan in December.
(AFP/Mark Hartman)
T
he United States evacuated more than 300 more people on two new flights out of Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the fast-spreading new coronavirus, the State Department said Tuesday.
The two flights left Wuhan on Tuesday US time after the passengers were screened, a State Department official said.
The official said that the United States has now brought home more than 500 passengers on three fights. A first flight, with 195 Americans on board, left Wuhan last week and landed in California.
The United States is preparing one or two additional planes to evacuate Americans on Thursday, after which it does not intend further flights, the official said.
The United States has been placing passengers under mandatory quarantine, the first time that the federal government has taken such a major step since the 1960s.
As stated in a travel advisory issued last week, "US citizens currently in China should attempt to depart by commercial means," the official said.
The United States has offered seats on the government planes as they becomes available, with the US citizens asked to reimburse the government.
Washington declared a public health emergency over the pathogen and has banned the entry of foreign nationals who have travelled to China, where 490 people have died.
Eleven cases of infection have been confirmed in the United States.
