India said on Tuesday they are working on evacuating their citizens from China’s Wuhan, the epicentre of a new coronavirus outbreak that has killed more than 100 people.
Indian state airline Air India was on standby to evacuate an estimated 250 Indians from Wuhan in Hubei province, local media reported earlier.
“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,” External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told reporters.
“No Indian student has been found to be affected by this virus. Parents need not worry about their children,” he said.
The death toll from the virus rose to 106 on Tuesday as authorities scrambled globally to curb its spread and U.S. health authorities advised travellers to avoid all non-essential travel to China. A growing number of countries have said they will evacuate their citizens from Wuhan.
The virus has infected thousands of people in China and spread to more than a dozen countries, including the United States.
There are no confirmed cases of the virus yet in India, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Tuesday, adding authorities were screening suspected patients in multiple cities. All hospitals had been asked to keep those suspected to have the virus in isolation wards, he added.
“We are taking all precautions against it,” said Vardhan.
India has also increased the number of airports from seven to 20 to do thermal screening of passengers for possible exposure to the deadly infection and made four more laboratories functional other than NIV-Pune for testing samples as part of its efforts to detect and check the spread of the virus.
Officially known as “2019-nCoV”, the coronavirus can cause pneumonia, but it is too early to know just how dangerous it is and how easily it spreads.
