The Union Health Ministry on Wednesday asked Indians to refrain from travelling to China where the novel Coronavirus has claimed over 170 lives. The ministry issued a fresh travel advisory and also urged people travelling to China to monitor their health closely. It asked people to use 24×7 helpline (011-23978046) for queries related to respiratory infection.
Over 170 (as on Jan 29) people have died and thousands infected after the outbreak of the deadly Coronavirus. The Chinese government has sealed off several cities, effectively trapping tens of millions of people, in a bid to contain the spread of the virus. India has also initiated the process of evacuating its citizens.
As part of the preparedness, India has also increased the number of airports from seven to 21 where thermal screening of passengers is being done for a possible exposure to the deadly nCoV. These include airports at Gaya, Guwahati, Visakhapatnam, Varanasi, Goa, Bhubaneswar and Lucknow besides the seven designated airports identified earlier.
The health ministry also has established four more laboratories apart from the NIV-Pune for testing samples. The four labs for the testing samples have been made functional at Alleppey, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai.
India is also planning to evacuate its nationals, mostly students, stuck in Wuhan, the epicentre of the viral outbreak. Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba had on Tuesday reviewed the preparedness to deal with the deadly virus after which the government said India has made a formal request to China for facilitating evacuation of Indians from Wuhan.
The Civil Aviation Ministry will make necessary arrangements for evacuation after the approval of Chinese authorities is received. Asserting that there was no confirmed case of the nCoV, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had on Tuesday said India was making all efforts to detect and check the spread of the virus even as more than a dozen countries around the world have confirmed cases.
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