Sixty-four persons who returned to Gujarat recently from China are under observation at their homes, but no suspected case of coronavirus infection has been found among them so far, a senior health department official said on Saturday.
Most of these persons are from Mehsana district (24), followed by Panchmahal and Surat (six each), and remaining ones are from Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Anand, said Principal Secretary (Health) Jayanti Ravi here.
"They are being monitored at their homes by respective district surveillance officers and are doing fine," she told reporters.
Passengers returning from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Japan and South Korea are being screened at the Ahmedabad International Airport, Ravi said.
Samples of those returning from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China, are being collected and sent to laboratories, the officer added.
The government has also set up isolation wards at the civil hospital in Ahmedabad, and is taking steps to ensure that the ports along the coastal areas of the state are secured, Ravi added.
A control room has been set up at the State Emergency Operation Centre (SEOC) in state capital Gandhinagar to deal with emergency cases, she said.
The government has sought Indian Medical Association's help to sensitize private doctors about how to handle patients who have returned from China recently, Ravi said.
District-level health officers are being giving training to deal with suspicious cases, she added.
The SEOC control room in Gandhinagar had shared details of over 200 people from Gujarat, mostly students, with the Ministry of External Affairs and Indian Embassy in China to help authorities bring them back.
The death toll due to novel coronavirus infection in China has reached 259.
The virus that emerged in early December and was traced to a market in Wuhan that sold wild animals, has now spread to more than two dozen nations, including India where the first case was confirmed in Kerala.
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