Coronavirus: 438 Wuhan Travelers ‘Lost’ in The United Kingdom as 11 More Brits are Evacuated

LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 02: A woman wears a face mask in Chinatown on February 2, 2020
Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The government of the United Kingdom is currently trying to track down 438 people who traveled to the UK from Wuhan before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) quarantined the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak.

As the death toll of the deadly coronavirus has climbed to over 300 victims within China, health officials in the United Kingdom are desperately trying to locate a third of the 1,561 people who traveled to Britain from the Chinese city of Wuhan.

At least 438 people who are still within the incubation period for the coronavirus, are currently unaccounted for in the UK, according to The Times.

Eleven British citizens were evacuated from Wuhan last night, joining the 83 who are already in quarantine at Arrowe Park Hospital in Merseyside, England.

One of the passengers fell ill during the flight and was separated from the other ten, reports the Liverpool Echo.

“During the flight, one of the passengers started to feel slightly unwell and self-isolated immediately. Upon landing, that passenger remains isolated and was taken to another NHS hospital for tests” wrote Janelle Holmes, the chief executive of Arrowe Park.

So far there are two confirmed cases of the deadly virus in Britain. A student at the University of York and his mother, both of whom had traveled from Wuhan, fell ill while staying in a hotel in York. The pair are currently under quarantine at an NHS hospital in Newcastle.

The university reassured students and parents saying that “that the risk of infection being passed to others on campus is extremely low”, per The Times.

“Current information from PHE suggests that the student did not come into contact with anybody on campus whilst they had symptoms, but investigations are ongoing to fully establish this”, said deputy registrar Heidi Fraser-Krauss.

There are believed to be more than 100,000 Chinese students currently studying in the United Kingdom, and around 30,000 British citizens in China.

“The challenge that we’ve got, and the Chinese have got frankly, is to contain the virus but also then to lift out people that want to come back home and we’re doing that as sensitively and as effectively as we can”, said Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

On Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global emergency as the deadly coronavirus continues to spread outside of China.

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.