The first Americans evacuated on a U.S. government flight from the Chinese city at the center of the coronavirus outbreak were likely facing at least a couple more days of isolation at a military base in Southern California Thursday morning. The diplomats from the U.S. Consulate in Wuhan and other U.S. citizens cleared initial health checks in China and then again during a stopover in Alaska on the way to the California base.
A U.S. official said earlier this week that they would be monitored for at least three days at the base — longer if illness was detected.
By Thursday morning the flu-like virus had killed at least 170 people, all of them in China. More than 7,700 others have been infected in more than a dozen countries, including five confirmed cases in the United States. More than 100 people in the U.S. were being tested for the disease across 26 states earlier this week.
The World Health Organization said it was of “great concern” to see the disease spreading person-to-person outside of China, leading the group to call a new emergency meeting for Thursday to consider declaring it a global health emergency. Just last week the WHO declined to give the new virus that designation, which would lead to more resources and greater global coordination in confronting it.
Other countries have also started evacuating citizens from China on chartered flights, and some major airlines have halted all flights to and from mainland China. The Trump administration is considering a complete travel ban on China as it evaluates the best ways to stop the virus spreading.
