(Photo Credit: REUTERS/Mike Blake)
Evacuees will be held for 72-hour quarantine
Foreign governments have already begun airlifting their citizens out of China, including the United States.
Nearly 2,000 Americans were evacuated from China in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. The plane, a U.S. government-chartered cargo jet, arrived back in the U.S. on Wednesday at a military base in California. The evacuees will remain isolated at the base for at least 72 hours of medical evaluation, public health officials said.
All passengers have agreed to remain voluntarily. “These people are not under federal quarantine orders,” Dr. Christopher Braden, deputy director of the CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said.
All passengers will undergo screening, given medical evaluations and have blood tests taken. The group mostly consisted of U.S. diplomats and their families—nearly 200 people—who were centered in or around Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.
So far, five cases of coronavirus have been diagnosed in the U.S., though none of them have been fatal.
As Wuhan and the surrounding municipalities entered a virtual quarantine in an attempt to contain the virus, many foreign governments including Japan, Thailand, and France have begun sending airlines to fly their citizens out of the country.
So far, the death toll in Wuhan has risen to 100, and more than 4,600 cases have been reported in the mainland.
By: Maytinee Kramer
