Coronavirus: Chinese man quarantined after he throws up on Air India flight
Pune: A Chinese man was on Friday admitted to a hospital here for possible exposure to novel Coronavirus after he vomited on Pune-bound Air India flight from Delhi, officials said.
The passenger was isolated and shifted to the civic- run Naidu Hospital after the flight arrived at the Pune airport around 7 am, an Air India official said.
"The passenger was travelling from Delhi to Pune on Air India flight. He complained of nausea and vomited on board. After the plane landed at the Pune airport, he was immediately isolated and shifted to Naidu Hospital," the official added.
Chief Health Officer of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), Dr Ramchandra Hankare, said the passenger is a Chinese national.
"On his arrival, he was isolated and taken to Naidu Hospital. His swab and blood samples have been sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) for analysis," he said.
The plane was later sanitised, which delayed its return journey to Delhi.
"The flight, which was supposed to take off for Delhi around 7.40 am, got delayed as it was cleaned and sanitised," an airport official said.
Naidu Hospital in Pune is one of the three hospitals in Maharashtra, where quarantine facilities have been set up to deal with the suspected cases of Coronavirus. No confirmed case of the deadly virus, which has so far killed 630 people in China, has been detected in Maharashtra yet.
The virus — which first emerged in Wuhan city in China's central Hubei province — has spread to 25 countries, including India (three confirmed cases have been reported from Kerala), the US and the UK.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government's highest anti-corruption agency is sending an investigation team to Hubei following public outrage over the death of a doctor who sounded an early alarm about the new virus that has killed 636 people in the Asian country as of Friday.
The National Supervisory Commission said the team would conduct a "comprehensive investigation" into the issues raised by the public about Li Wenliang, the 34-year-old doctor who died on Friday, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) newspaper said in a report.
The Commission did not specify the issues of public concern, but angry posts on China's social media platform Weibo about why the police stopped and reprimanded Li when he warned his friends on WeChat about the new virus have overwhelmed the Internet.
Li, who worked in a Wuhan hospital, was declared dead at 2.58 am on Friday morning by Wuhan Central Hospital, just days after he said he was infected with Coronavirus.
Li was one of the whistle-blowers who alerted his friends about the outbreak last December, and was reprimanded by police for spreading inaccurate information.
India has cancelled all visas issued to foreign nationals coming from China as it stepped up efforts to combat the spread of Coronavirus after 150 passengers were identified with symptoms of the deadly virus and sent to isolation units.
With agency inputs
