India begins preparations to airlift remaining Indians from China

India has begun preparations to airlift the remaining Indians from China, hours after it evacuated 324 Indian nationals from the coronavirus-hit Wuhan city as the death toll from the deadly disease rose to 259 in the country.

A special Air India plane carrying 211 students, 110 working professionals and three minors from Wuhan reached Delhi around 7.30 am on Saturday.

“We look forward to operating another flight to evacuate remaining Indian nationals, who have consented to leave Hubei Province for the time being,” the Indian Embassy said in a tweet on Saturday.

An Air India spokesperson said that another flight will depart to Wuhan from Delhi at 12.50 pm on Saturday with a different set of crew, same doctors” team with other aircraft.

“An Air India flight carrying 324 Indian nationals from the coronavirus-hit Hubei Province of China took off from Wuhan in the early hours of Feb 1. Majority of the passengers were Indian students. We sincerely thank the Chinese government for facilitating this flight,” it said.

“We urge all Indian citizens from Hubei who intend to avail this flight for India and not yet contacted the Embassy, to urgently call the hotlines (+8618610952903 and +8618612083629) or dedicated email ID helpdesk.beijing@mea.gov.in before 0800 hours on February 1, 2020,” the Embassy said in the tweet.

On Saturday, the death toll from the novel coronavirus outbreak in China rose to 259 with total confirmed cases surging to 11,791 amid stepped up efforts by a number of countries to evacuate their nationals from Hubei province, the epicentre of the virus.

The Indians evacuated on Friday were from Wuhan. The second batch was mainly expected to be from Hubei province for which Wuhan is the provincial capital.

Officials said the Indian Army has set up a quarantine facility in Manesar near Delhi to keep those evacuated from China”s Hubei province. They would be monitored for any signs of infection for a duration of two weeks by a qualified team of doctors and staff members.

So far about 124 positive cases have been reported in a host of countries, including India where the first case was confirmed in Kerala.

Hubei province and Wuhan remained the ground zero of the virus with 45 deaths and 1,347 confirmed cases, according to the Chinese commission”s report.