In this regard, the State Department said it was sending a chartered flight to retrieve US government personnel deployed in the city, while Wuhan, the city of 11 million people where the outbreak is believed to have originated, remains closed to stop the virus.
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An official from that department informed NBC News that, since there is space available on the plane, some citizens will also be offered seats and that they will give priority to those who are at the highest risk of contracting the virus if they remain in Wuhan.
The plane is expected to leave Wuhan on Wednesday morning, local time.
The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services said in a statement that all people on board will be examined by Chinese and US officials before leaving Wuhan, and that no one with symptoms can address. Passengers will also be examined once they arrive in Anchorage, the agency said.
Similar measures have been taken by South Korea and Japan that announced that they will send charter flights to Wuhan to get their citizens out of the city. About 700 South Korean citizens are expected to be evacuated later this week. The Japanese authorities said they will send their first charter plane to Wuhan on Tuesday night.
Other nations, including France, Australia and Spain, seek to get their citizens out of Wuhan.
The virus has now spread to four continents with new cases that arise every day outside of China, even in the US where five cases have been confirmed so far.
Germany also became the second country in Europe to confirm a case of coronavirus on Monday.
Those infected transmit the virus before symptoms appearsaid China’s health minister on Sunday, complicating efforts to contain the outbreak that already extends to 14 nations outside of China
For its part, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier stressed that the rapid increase in cases is not necessarily a reason to reconvene an emergency committee in order to study the declaration of an international emergency, option that was provisionally highlighted last week.
“Three criteria are required: that it is an extraordinary event, that it constitutes a risk of rapid expansion in other countries, and that it requires a coordinated international response,” he said, clarifying that despite the non-declaration of global alert there is already an answer coordinated worldwide.
He reiterated that the average profile of those killed by the coronavirus continues to be people with previous health complications, many of them elderly, and confirmed that the incubation period, in which the coronavirus can be transmitted to other people, is between one and fourteen days.
Among the recommendations to the general public regarding the coronavirus, Lindmeier advised those who show symptoms such as cough, fever or headaches, similar to those of a flu, to “isolate themselves and seek medical help.”
On the possibility that the virus is transmitted by indirect contact (for example, that a patient touches a surface and it is contaminated), he clarified that it could occur if the contact is immediate but not after a short period of time.
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