The flight arrived at Wuhan's Tianhe International Airport on Friday evening. While the official number of students to be airlifted in the two flights is not known, Indians who reached the Wuhan airport on Friday said they were told that 374 were expected to be airlifted by the Air India flight. India has taken an undertaking from the Indians travelling in the two flights that they would be quarantined for 14 days after their arrival, besides undergoing special checks at the Wuhan airport.
The Wuhan lockdown was lifted even as epidemiologists warned that it is not the time to completely lower the guard and ease on full-scale restrictions, considering the looming asymptomatic patients and possible rebound in infections, the official media reported.
The total deaths from the more than two-month-old outbreak as reported on Thursday stood at 1,367, with the total number of confirmed cases mounting to 59,804, health officials were quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.
A sense of disquiet prevailed in Beijing as officials announced the capital's first death from the deadly virus, a grim reminder that the epidemic has begun to take toll outside Hubei province.
Making a statement on the situation after cases of coronavirus surfaced, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said the government is taking all necessary measures to prevent the spread of the virus.
The reality is, the worldwide toll could have been checked within time if China had been more transparent and had warned countries regarding the new strain of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)-like infection, which originated at a 'wet market' in its province of Hubei late last year.
'The government has made good arrangements to tackle this situation.' 'At the ITBP camp, doctors have arrived from different hospitals from every state of India.' 'They have training on how to deal with suspected coronavirus cases.' ''So I am sure India will handle the coronavirus situation well.'
The move comes a day after China lifted the 76-day lockdown in Wuhan, where the pandemic originated. China's National Health Commission (NHC) on Thursday reported 63 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including 61 imported ones taking the total to 1,104 cases.
A meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba reviewed India's preparedness to deal with the virus amid mounting global concern over increasing number of cases in China and several other countries.
'We have to accept that the infection is now in the community and we can't isolate everyone who gets it.' 'Instead, what we need to do is to find out those who are most at risk of death, isolate them and save them from the rest.'
The meeting, which comes after the Doklam standoff, is aimed at a working a new paradigm for the bilateral relations for the next 15 years.
How China's all powerful Communist party bungled the response to the coronavirus crisis.
The government will also evacuate Indians on Friday from China's Wuhan city, the epicentre of the deadly Coronavirus, which has spread to at least 17 countries already.
Modi was expected to arrive in Wuhan in the evening on April 26 and join Xi in the informal summit at a picturesque location the next day.
The Union Health ministry put the number of positive cases at 82, eight more since Thursday night, which includes the woman and a 76-year-old man from Karnataka who became the country's first coronavirus fatality besides 17 foreign nationals, Health Ministry officials said.
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