About 400 people have registered for help to get out of a Chinese province under lockdown because of the deadly corona virus.
Foreign Minister Marise Payne and officials have made “significant progress” in finding a way for Australians stuck in China to get home, Health Minister Greg Hunt said.
“They are being cross-checked to ensure there is no double counting because sometimes you will have understandably multiple family members report the same person so they are going through that process, but at this stage, approximately 400 registrations have been placed with Foreign Affairs,” he told reporters in Melbourne on Tuesday.
“The Foreign Minister and the embassy are working with the Chinese authorities and the advice I have from Foreign Minister Payne just before coming here is there’s been significant progress.”
Five people are being treated in Australian hospitals for the virus, but chief health officer Brendan Murphy said they are in a stable condition.
“In fact one of them is so well, they’re only in hospital because of the quarantine requirements,” he told reporters.
A 21-year-old Sydney university student became the country’s fifth person to be diagnosed after flying back from the virus’s epicentre in Wuhan, China.
Three men – aged 35, 43 and 53 – are also being treated at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital and are in a stable condition.
Authorities says there’s potential for more cases and are working to trace all contact the five patients have had, including people who were on the same flights
NSW Health confirmed five people were also undergoing testing.
A man in his 50s in Victoria is being treated at Monash Medical Centre while four of his family members are under home isolation.
In the latest case to be identified by authorities, the UNSW student displayed no symptoms upon landing in Sydney on China Eastern flight MU749 last Thursday but 24 hours later began exhibiting flu-like symptoms.
The diagnosis came as some schools around the country took action to segregate students who had visited China.
Ten Chinese pupils at Brisbane’s Stuartholme are being isolated to their own floor of the boarding house for two weeks and assessed regularly for illness under the advice of Queensland Health, The Australian reported.
Pymble Ladies College in Sydney and Firbank Grammar School in Melbourne advised parents to keep their children at home for at least two weeks if they had visited an affected area in China.
Other private schools requested students who had visited the affected regions in China provide a doctor’s certificate.
China’s National Health Commission Minister Ma Xiaowei said the country’s health officials believed patients were infectious during the virus’ incubation period, which ranges from one-to-14 days.
Until now, doctors have believed patients are only contagious when they start showing symptoms, but the government was seeking urgent advice from the World Health Organisation.
“The expert panels were not convinced of that at the moment. They were not convinced that evidence is being presented,” Prof Murphy said previously.
“It would be very unusual because this virus is similar to the SARS and MERS viruses and they were not infectious before symptoms.
“If that were to be the case, it would have implications for contact tracing.”
-AAP
The post 400 Australians register for China virus evacuation appeared first on The New Daily.
**Business and Marketing support on best price; Hit the link now----> http://bit.ly/2HsQmSi