Spain confirms 2nd virus case; UK evacuates 200
MADRID: The UK confirmed its fourth case of the new virus from China and Spain reported its second on Sunday as European authorities pressed to contain the spread of the coronavirus by tracking down people who came into contact with those infected.
Both of the new cases were acquired during trips to France, officials said.
French medical authorities zeroed in on a ski resort in the Alps where five British citizens, including a 9-year-old child, contracted the virus. Officials were testing hundreds of children and their families in Contaminesmontjoie. The fact that a British man who had become infected during a business trip to Singapore could infect others days later in the French Alps underscored the potential for the outbreak to spread further.
Italian health authorities in Tuscany, meanwhile, were trying to re-trace the steps of a Taiwanese couple who stayed four days in a Florence hotel. They flew to Hong Kong and then to Taiwan on February 1 and were later confirmed to have the virus.
The new UK case is a known contact of a previously confirmed case there, the country’s chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty said.
In Spain, authorities were working to identify everyone who came into contact with a British man whose case was detected in Mallorca, a popular vacation island in the Mediterranean Sea.
The man, who lives on the island, contracted the virus at the end of January at a French ski resort, according to Fernando
Simón, head of Spain’s Coordination Center for Health Alerts and Emergencies.
The man, who was not identified, is healthy but was being kept in isolation in Palma de Mallorca, Simón told a news conference .
In Britain, a plane evacuating more than 200 people from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the center of the epidemic landed jonsunday at RAF Brize Norton. British officials said it brought back 105 British citizens and family members, as well as 95 European citizens and family members. In a carefully coordinated ballet of secure planes and buses, those passengers were distributed around Europe.
The British passengers were taken to a hotel-conference center in Milton Keys, where they will be quarantined for 14 days.
INFECTIONS RISE ABOARD CRUISE SHIP
The number of passengers on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship off Japan’s coast rises to 64. Some 3,700 passengers remain on the ship and have been asked to stay inside their cabins.
In Hong Kong meanwhile thousands of people stranded aboard another cruise ship for five days are allowed to disembark after its 1,800 crew test negative for the virus.
B’DESH CREW REFUSE TO FLY EVACUATION PLANE
DHAKA: Aircrew from Bangladesh’s national carrier Biman have refused to work on a flight aimed at repatriating citizens from virus-hit Chinese cities, forcing the government to scrap the evacuation plan.
The South Asian nation last week evacuated 312 people, mostly students, from the epicentre of the deadly outbreak, and had planned a second flight for another 171 Bangladeshis.
“We can’t bring them because we can’t send any flight,” foreign minister AK Abdul Momen told reporters on Saturday.
“No crew wants to go there. The crew who went there earlier don’t want to go either.” The outbreak, which has killed more than 800 people and infected tens of thousands across China, has spread to some 24 countries.