India tightens rules for Chinese visitors, infections cross 20,000

NEWDELHI: Existing visas for Chinese and foreign travellers who have been in China in the past two weeks stand cancelled, India clarified on Tuesday, while also announcing that aerobridges at dedicated gates at seven international airports will be used to screen passengers arriving from high-risk locations to contain the novel coronavirus (2019-ncov) outbreak that has killed 427 people and triggered a global scare.

Three men and two women, housed in a camp set up for Indians who have been evacuated from China, were moved to Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital on Tuesday after they developed cough, fever and sore throat — symptoms of the fast-spreading virus that has infected over 20,000 people, including three in Kerala, across 25 countries.

“They have been shifted to the hospital for better observation... It’s just a precautionary shift, as their sample results are still awaited,” a spokesperson for the Indo-tibetan Border Police (ITBP) said in a statement.

Over the weekend, India has brought back 647 citizens and seven Maldivians from Wuhan, the Chinese city considered to be the epicentre of the outbreak. Those rescued have been quarantined in two facilities — one in Haryana’s Manesar managed by the Indian Army and the other in the national capital’s Chhawla

Camp managed by ITBP.

Biological samples of 160 of the evacuees have been tested so far. All have returned negative. One of the doctors on the Air India flights that brought the Indians back has developed a cough, but officials in the Union ministry of health said it was unlikely that the doctor had contracted the infection.

On Tuesday, China reported a record daily jump in deaths of 64 to 425, and Hong Kong saw its first coronavirus death. Total infections in mainland China stood at 20,438. Hong Kong’s first fatality was only the second outside mainland China, after last week’s death of a man in the Philippines.

The WHO which has declared the virus a global health emergency, said the outbreak does not yet constitute a “pandemic” and is at present “an epidemic with multiple foci”.

Back in India, Union health secretary Preeti Sudan held a video conference with representatives of states and senior officials of various ministries .