Paris (AFP)
The tests carried out on twenty returnees arrived Sunday from Wuhan, epicenter of the epidemic of the new coronavirus, and presenting "symptoms", were found to be "negative", announced Monday on BFMTV Adrien Taquet, Secretary of State to the Minister of Health.
"All these tests turned out to be negative and therefore all these people were able to reach the centers" in Aix-en-Provence and Carry-le-Rouet, in the south of France, where they will be quarantined for 14 days , he said.
A second group of returnees from Wuhan arrived in France on Sunday after a first flight arrived on Friday.
Among the 254 passengers on this second flight, 36 presented symptoms upon their arrival in Istres, according to the Ministry of Health. Sixteen of them immediately returned to their country but "twenty" French and non-European nationals had to stay on the tarmac in Istres in order to be tested.
They are "people who when they got on the plane had some symptoms but were not directly related to the coronavirus, rather colds, etc., but they had to be controlled when getting off the plane, which was done on the base, "said Adrien Taquet.
Government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye said for her part on France 2 that these returnees would be "obviously followed like all those who are now in quarantine with regular temperature readings".
After these two repatriation flights, "there is no Frenchman who remains on the spot who made the request for repatriation. All those who wanted it were repatriated," she added.
The number of confirmed new coronavirus infections in China has climbed to more than 17,200 and has spread to more than 20 countries. So far, 361 people have died in mainland China (excluding Hong Kong and Macao), more than the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic in 2002-2003.
© 2020 AFP