Air India jumbo plane ready to evacuate Indians from China

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Air India jumbo plane ready to evacuate Indians from China

Last Updated : 29 Jan 2020 11:37:41 AM IST

(no file)

Air India has kept a 423-seater jumbo plane ready in Mumbai to evacuate Indian citizens stuck in China's Wuhan city due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The airline is expected to operate a flight using Boeing 747.

Earlier, India's civil aviation regulator DGCA gave its clearance to the airline to operate the Mumbai-Delhi-Wuhan flight.

The government sources said, "the aircraft is ready with all necessary resources like the team of doctors and paramedical staff with a sufficient number of masks for the passengers as well as the cockpit and cabin crew".

The major worry with regards to evacuating Indians from Wuhan and other affected areas is about screening the people boarding the flight. Moreover, the passengers have to be constantly monitored during the flight and have to be quarantined after reaching Delhi.

"Do we have the required infrastructure to deal with this? The aircraft, crew and the passengers from Wuhan have to be isolated and only after ruling out infection they are to be allowed to leave," a source said.

He added that it is a complicated issue as India cannot shrug off its responsibility.

"So, infected or not infected, they have to be brought back," the source said.

The new virus, which is of the same genre as SARS which broke out in 2003, was first reported in the WHO Disease Outbreak news on January 5, 2020. It has progressively spread across many countries from its epicentre in Wuhan.

In a bid to curb the spread of the virus, Chinese authorities have closed transportation services across many parts of the country, including Wuhan.

The new virus has spread at a much faster pace than the 2003 SARS epidemic.

Wuhan is the hub of transport and industry in central China.