Cabo Verde: Students in Wuhan request to leave China – ambassador

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Cabo Verde: Students in Wuhan request to leave China – ambassador

4:09 CAT | 29 Jan 2020

Cape Verdean students quarantined in Wuhan, a Chinese city at the epicentre of the new coronavirus outbreak, have asked Cabo Verde to be repatriated from the country, but the process is dependent on health issues, the official source said.

The information was released on Wednesday in an interview with Lusa from Beijing by Cabo Verde’s ambassador to China, Tânia Romualdo, adding that the Cape Verdean authorities have recorded the presence of at least 420 citizens in China, including Macau, of whom around 350 are students.

“The students in Wuhan have sent a letter to that effect [request for evacuation] and the government of Cabo Verde is examining all possibilities. As you know, in these situations, in addition to many other issues, international health guidelines and protocols also weigh heavily,” the diplomat said.

China has raised the death toll from the new coronavirus detected at the end of the year in Wuhan, capital of Hubei province (centre), to 132 dead and more than 5,900 infected.

According to Tânia Romualdo, there is no record of any Cape Verdean citizen in China infected by the outbreak of the new coronavirus or with symptoms.

The director of the Cabo Verde Epidemic Surveillance and Response Service said Tuesday in Praia that the country intends to count on Portugal’s support to remove its students from Wuhan.

“We are already creating plans to organise their return, we already have information that will come out, they will come out together with the Portuguese,” said Domingos Teixeira, who was speaking on the day that a technical team for rapid intervention was created, which held its first meeting in the city of Praia to coordinate the implementation of internal prevention measures, early detection of suspected cases of coronavirus.

Several countries have already begun the repatriation of citizens of Wuhan, a region with 56 million people that was quarantined last week, with exits and entries banned by the authorities for an indefinite period, and several companies have suspended air links with China.

In Wuhan, 16 young Cape Verdeans are studying on four different university campuses.

“When the outbreak broke out, the students were on vacation and many travelled within China but also abroad,” the Cape Verdean ambassador said.

Of the total of 16, one student travelled to Beijing on vacation and another to Thailand. In the opposite direction, another Cape Verdean student travelled to Wuhan on vacation and was caught in quarantine.

“The universities introduced preventive and control measures. The spaces are being disinfected regularly and the students are being watched twice a day, notably through temperature control,” said Tânia Romualdo, ensuring that she has been talking to these students every day in quarantine in Wuhan.

The almost 6,000 confirmed infections show that the number of people affected during the epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which reached 5,327 people between November 2002 and August 2003, has already been exceeded in China, according to official data.

A case of the new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has been identified in the United Arab Emirates, the first detected in Middle Eastern countries.

In addition to the mainland territory of China, cases of infection have been reported in Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Singapore, Vietnam, Nepal, Malaysia, Australia, Canada, Germany, France and the United Arab Emirates.

Source: Lusa