San Diego gets second jet carrying U.S. evacuees from Wuhan virus zone as quarantine continues
A second jetliner carrying U.S. evacuees from Wuhan, China, touched down Friday morning at San Diego’s Marine Corps Air Station Miramar as the number of passengers from Wednesday’s evacuation flight out of the Chinese city evaluated for potential coronavirus stands at five.
The chartered Kalitta Air jet touched down and slowly rolled to a remote taxiway, in video captured by San Diego NBC affiliate KNSD-TV. The plane carried 67 passengers who were met by personnel from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Health and Human Services Department, a CDC spokesman told the San Diego station.
The flight stopped in Vancouver, where two people, a Canadian citizen; the other with symptoms of cough and fever, left the plane. The flight proceeded to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield before landing in San Diego, said KNSD-TV.
Four people transferred Wednesday from Miramar are now being cared for at UC San Diego Health Center, said hospital spokeswoman Jackie Carr. A fifth is at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, Carr said. No update on their condition was available Friday, Carr said, but no one has been confirmed infected by the virus, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Friday.
As the federal quarantine of the hundreds of U.S. diplomatic workers and their families plucked from the virus’ hot zone continued, California Department of Public Health officials said 16 laboratories including the state’s viral disease lab in Richmond will soon be ready to test for the virus.
The Richmond lab expects to conduct testing by Feb. 12; the remaining labs are expected to conduct tests in the next couple of weeks, said state public health officials.
In a state now housing four flight loads of coronavirus zone evacuees – two in San Diego, one at Travis; and the first last week at March Air Reserve Base near Riverside – state Department of Public Health director Dr. Sonia Angell said providing the tests in California “will deliver more rapid test results to improve care of persons who maybe sick with this new virus.”
On Wednesday, 167 passengers fleeing Wuhan were the first to land at Miramar.
A second flight Wednesday to Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield carried 178 passengers. Nearly all the Travis-bound evacuees were being housed at an on-base inn and segregated from base residents, personnel and civilian workers.
A child who had a fever aboard the Travis-bound jet was taken to an off-base hospital. Child and mother were being isolated at the nearby facility, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said at a Wednesday news briefing in Fairfield.
Meantime, at March near Riverside, a second child under quarantine developed a fever Wednesday and was being evaluated at Riverside University Health System Medical Center in Moreno Valley, the Riverside Press-Enterprise reported.
A quarantined child taken to the same Moreno Valley hospital earlier in the week after he developed a fever, was declared free of coronavirus and returned with his mother to the base to complete the 14-day quarantine period, the Press-Enterprise reported.
A man who arrived at Los Angeles International Airport ill, was taken to March and placed in quarantine; was allowed to leave the base Wednesday after his quarantine period expired, Riverside County health officials told the Press-Enterprise.
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